Confessions of a Twenty-Something Nobody

Superbowl + Birthdays = Fantastic Fun!

2012-02-06T15:33:00.001-07:00

Yesterday was Gaven's birthday and so we celebrated his birthday while cheering on the Giants for the Superbowl (I, however, had no interest in either team and so I was mainly there for the food ;) ha ha). It is also Paul's birthday coming up soon and so we double it up!

We celebrated with brats, wings, crackers and cheese, chips, root beer and apple beer - all things unhealthy!! But it was delicious tasting food to dive into to break our fast for the day and start celebrating!

Asher is hittin' the booze a little too early if you ask me:

Dallin and Aiden did sit ups off Benny's back:

I made our ice cream cake into a football for this celebration. I was going to buy a football shaped cake pan and then decided that I could save myself 13 bucks and fashion it myself somehow. It was rickety for awhile but I saved it and it turned out great - and yummy! It was half Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup for Paul and half something NOT chocolate and nutty for Gaven :)

Yay!!!!

Red Solo Cup, I fill you up!!

Let's have a party, Let's have a party!

Red Solo Cup, I lift you up!

Proceed to Party, Proceed to party!!

And the Giants won so many people in our household were just delighted. I was delighted because I had a neck massage from my sister-in-law who is studying physical therapy and she worked out about 80 knots and adhesions in several layers of muscle. Quite a good day!!

The Shape of Mercy

2012-02-06T14:48:00.001-07:00

Mmmmkay. So I wasn't supposed to read any books until I am up to date on Asher's journal. I have the third book in the Hush, Hush series beckoning me every day from under my bed where I have hidden it from out of view.

Friday night Paul and I went out with Paul and Teresa (for some Mid-Eastern cuisine which I loved) and we decided to find an ice cream joint around Sugarhouse afterward. We ended up at Barnes & Noble instead because I have been craving the smell of new books and Paul and Teresa are quite familiar with their coffee-free smoothies - Win Win!!!

I needed to find our book club's latest read, The Shape of Mercy. I heard a couple girls in the book club say that they loved every single page of this book and so I knew it would be one I would have to have on my shelves and not in my Kindle. And I am so glad I do have it in hard copy because I, too, loved every single page of this book.

It's written by Susan Meissner and, as Publishers Weekly comment says on the front cover, "She is a stunning storyteller." I sat down with Asher to read and I was sucked in immediately and knew I was in trouble.

This is a story of Lauren who transcribes the 300-year-old diary of a girl named Mercy Hayworth who was convicted and sentenced of witchcraft during the Salem Witch Trials. I love Lauren's story and Mercy's story and the wisdom of the words of the author. It's a book about how 'we tend to judge people based on notions rather than on truth, and without stopping to consider if we even have the right to judge them at all.'

I love it! You should read it!

One For The Money

2012-01-27T20:28:00.001-07:00

I'm so excited for this movie to come out!!

This is based off the Stephanie Plum novels by Janet Evanovich. There are 18 novels in this series of a learning to be street-smart girl (while clueless she can be quite sharp) who ends up being a bounty hunter. They are actually really funny books, although, I only made it to number seven. I just grew bored of the scenarios that always seemed to be the same: Stephanie doesn't do what she should, ends up in trouble, some how it all works out but she never carries her stupid gun anywhere because she doesn't like guns but she's a bounty hunter for hell's sake and always, always, always has a million things in her bag and can never get her stun gun when she really needs it and Grandma is always tagging along & somehow she always manages to get every car she ever drives blown up. Ugh. Those things bug me tremendously.

However!!!

The first five or so books = really funny. The first two or three were my favorites hence why I am excited about the first one, One For the Money, becoming a film. Watch the trailer! I think it'll be a fairly decent movie :)

30 Things To Stop Doing To Yourself

2012-01-24T19:12:00.003-07:00

I was reading a website that I can't remember and they referenced this article "30 Things To Stop Doing To Yourself" (I think they were talking about New Years Resolutions and the like). I read over this and I personally think it's a list that everyone can benefit from. I know there is not one person out there who is not guilty of at least one of these (except me cuz I'm perfect, duh).

2012

2012-01-13T22:58:00.002-07:00

I can't believe it's the beginning of a new year. I've said before that I find New Year's quite depressing rather than exciting. I hate hearing New Year party advertisements when Christmas is at a close. And I've also said before that Paul and I have given up trying to find a happenin' club party to go to and have found that it's much more our style to stay in a be bums in our sweat pants. We made some Charlie Brown style mini pizzas, played with Asher til it was time to put him to bed, and then we played Fruit Ninja, watched a movie that I can't remember and then popped the bubbly for the countdown. As long as I'm near my hunny for that, I'm good :)

Happy New Year!

I guess.

Christmas Bells Are Ringing!

2012-01-13T22:49:00.001-07:00

Holy Crap I need to catch up! Christmas was jam-packed with lots of fun stuff and dare I say, it was Gloooooorious!!!

I was so excited for Christmas Eve! I was given these white and red striped baby bottoms a long time ago and I was hoping they would still fit Asher by Christmas and they did. I wanted to find just a plain red onesie to go with it but happened upon a $3 'My First Christmas' onesie that was actually pretty perfect for it so I snatched it up. He looked adorable!!! I was so excited for everyone to see him and they all just ate him up!! See him in his little baby Santa hat with lipstick marks all over his face?? That's the proof!! Other happenings for the evening: my dad and Asher had some good times together. Asher LOVES being up in the air. If he's cranky, you can stick him up in the air and he just starts smiling and laughing. So fun! Morgan and Gaven had a wrestling match in the middle of Catch Phrase, Paul and Gaven put Aiden and Bronsynn up on their hands (I dare say Gaven had the harder one!!), and Asher being so stinking cute in his Christmas Jammies and, as you can tell, he's so excited in his crib waiting for Santa to come!

Paul and I were sooooo tired by the time we got home from my parents that night. It felt good to hit the sack. But Paul was up and at it at 7 am Christmas morning. I forced myself up and out of bed and helped Paul get our stuff set up....a fire, Christmas music, lights, hot chocolate! This year Bacardi got a super nice bed along with his bone. At first he didn't know what to do with it but eventually reached the point where he didn't even have to be told to go to bed. We'd just start closing up shop and in he'd go. I think he likes it.

Our sweet baby in his cute Christmas jammies, playing on his Christmas blanket that Paul's parents bought him. He played with wrapping paper while Paul and I did our thing. He received this cute bomber hat for his nugget in stocking and got a super stellar outfit for Christmas from Mom and Dad!

Paul made out like a bandit. In his stocking, among all the goods, he found coal. Guess he was a little naughty...ha ha ha. He got a stellar tie 'from Asher', his yearly BKE's, and then it got a little tricky. All Paul wanted for Christmas was an Xbox. He actually wanted it last year and I basically refused it. We already have the Wii and why do we need two gaming systems? But the Wii doesn't have Call of Duty, Halo, or the not-stupid versions of Madden Football, Paul cries to me. So I pretended I was still not going to buy him an Xbox, but in order to fool him I wrapped up two extra 'presents' to throw him off (the idea being that if he had six wrapped presents then there's no possible way an Xbox could be one of them because that would be way over the limit). It worked! Ha ha nailed it!! In one box I put a bunch of stupid stuff from around the house in like a mini flashlight, knee straps, nipple cream (yep!) and then a card where I made up a little Christmas jingle about this stupid musical tie Paul's mom gave him that he would never wear in a million years. Then he opened his Xbox - lots of smiles!! Yay!! And then he opened another empty box. And then he opened up his Kinect...because c'mon - I can't NOT get a Kinect to go with it! And then he opened up MW3. I think I made him pretty happy:

One of the thousands of reasons I love my husband is that he is so thoughtful with his gifts. He tries to make things meaningful and he pays attention to the little things and he always ends up happily surprising me! I got my slippers I wanted (cuz I actually found them, bought them and gave them to Paul and said "Here: wrap these. These are from you to me."), a 15lb kettlebell (which was too light for me and so we upgraded to a 30), money for me to shop for myself, a killer new pair of running shoes, and Asher 'gave' me some weight lifting gloves!

As tradition serves we gathered up presents and headed back out to my mom's where hot Sticky Buns welcomed us. My nephews were so excited for their new Wii and Balance Board. They also received dart gear, as you can see on Paul and Aiden below. They have shirts and goggles and the two of them had a war all morning. Paul and I received a stellar tent to add to our camping gear! In the last few Christmas' we've collected some nice stuff from them for Christmas and we are so excited for the summer! Asher got a suuuuper cute pair of overalls from Grandma and Grandpa along with that really cute stuffed dragon that matches his room (it's actually an alligator but I saw it and had to have it and I say it's a dragon so there). Exchanging presents with sibs and fam was full of laughs and great fun. We hung out all day and watched new movies and then headed over to Paul's parents:

Paul and I had a great time at his parents as well. We ate a great dinner and visited with some family we haven't seen in awhile. Trudi and Mike had also given Asher a Christmas outfit that I changed him into. It was pretty dang cute on him! Asher the Elf visited with Santa Matt, drooled all over Grandma Budd's pants, and was given some toys, books, a Champion tracksuit, and jammies. His Uncle Beej and Aunt Hilary also gave him some great books! In the middle picture with me and Matt in the background...I promise Matt isn't really picking his nose. That was just for the camera's benefit. Also, BJ had me for Christmas this year and when he asked what I wanted I jokingly told him I wanted sand from a beach in Costa Rica. They were married back in August but had just left a week before Christmas for their honeymoon and guess where they went?? Well, those gift cards down in that there picture box would be sitting on top of a bunch of sand. That's right --- I have sand from Costa Rica! I laughed so hard when I picked up the present and felt something slosh to the side. So cool!:

We had such a great couple days and felt so blessed. I love being with family more than anything and Christmas makes it super special! But that wasn't all the Christmas fun - my dad's side of the family got together a few days after Christmas. We had a Cafe Rio style nacho/taco/salad bar (which was absolutely tremendous!), the kids smacked the pinata and it only took 2 rounds to bust it this year, my cousin Nicole got a Sundae in her mouth, Paul visited with my tiny cousin, Ella, and my Grandma is sitting there in the corner with her 13 great grandchildren!! Holy Cow!! There were three great grandkids born this past summer. Oh, and that middle bottom picture is Asher pushing himself up onto his knees! That was a first!

Look At The Pretty Lights!!

2012-01-13T20:00:00.000-07:00

Paul and I had the pleasure of going up to see the Temple Lights again and this time with our good friends, The Edmunds and their fantasticly funny kid, Jensen as well as Stephanie (Teresa's super cool sis from outta town), her husband and her husband's brother. It was real cold but real pretty. I don't know how I never ended up walking down the row of pink lights but it's now my favorite part tied with the ginormous trees near the temple done all up in white. Afterwards, we headed to Gourmandise for some hot chocolate and the mouthwatering French desserts where I wish that I could take one of each every time I go there.

4 Months!!

2012-01-08T22:15:00.000-07:00

I HEART HEART HEART my sweet baby!

This says '4 months' so pretend I did this a month ago because he actually is going to be 5 months in 2 days. Slacker much?

He is still just growing like crazy!! He has slowed down some though so in a month he put on 1 pound instead of 4.

He laughs so much. I can't believe I have such a genuinely happy baby! He screams with excitement, he chuckles to himself, he moves his mouth and makes little noises (and spit bubbles) and smiles ALL the time. I freaking love his smile!!!

He rolled over onto his tummy on Dec. 14th (cuz he loves Becky Lou, I guess!).

He loves crinkle toys A. LOT.

He loves to grab his toes (that along with the rolling onto tummy first had my pediatrician very impressed cuz I guess that's a six month thing).

He is my angel because he sleeps at the very least 9 hours a night and has done so for such a long time (I promise I'm not rubbing it in! I'm just happy 'bout that!)

His 4 MONTH STATS:

Weight: 18.7 lbs - 96th percentile again!

Height: 26.0" - 80th

Head: 17.0" - 77th

AND he's going to be an intellectual!:

Divergent

2012-01-08T21:45:00.001-07:00

Must say this book ROCKS.

It's the first book of the book club for the year twenty12. I thought maybe I'd just check it out at the library. It's checked out EVERYWHERE with 166 holds. Hmmmmmm, me thinks. Must be pretty darn good then. So I buy it. Glad I did. Cuz it ROCKS.

It felt like a cross between The Hunger Games (only due the separation of different Districts and a time in the future where everything is different) and The Uglies. At the same time, it was something all it's own and it was so well written, so smart and so captivating.

I loved it!!!!

Ouch.

2011-12-18T00:29:00.002-07:00

Bacardi is one lucky dog. And we are two very lucky dog owners!

Thursday I decided to take Bacardi with me when I went out to my parents house to watch my nephew. It had been awhile since he had been out there to play with his pal, Jimmer.

Bacardi and Jimmer have always stayed in the yard, on the canal or out with the horses. But, they have never gone past the horses in the back or past the horse pasture in the front...except for the last few times Bacardi was out there they went for a little visit to the Mastif who belongs to our backyard neighbors. That is part of the reason why I stopped taking Bacardi out to my parents because those two dogs are trouble and Bacardi was 'misbehaving'.

Well I checked on them before I sat down to feed Asher and try to put him to sleep. A little while later the doorbell rang and Dallin ran off to get the door. I stopped him because I wasn't expecting people and I didn't want him opening the door for strangers. So I hurry up with baby in tow to get the door and I find a young lady holding Jimmer by his collar and Bacardi is laying on the grass.

My first thought was that they did something to her and I was in big trouble. Turns out that she hit my dog with her car. She was pretty upset and I felt super bad for her, especially when I found out that she was wearing a heart monitor because of her heart surgery she had had. Yikes!!!

I could see Bacardi try to get up and he would limp very badly and was bleeding. She said that she saw Jimmer across the street (see....bad dog!!) and she saw Bacardi but didn't think that he was going to dart out into the road. Bacardi has been trained never to go out on to the street but, as I said, he and Jimmer are trouble and it's bothersome. Obviously Bacardi did dart out in front of her and she hit him and he rolled a couple times. I'm thankful that she stopped and came to the door to let me know!

I immediately called my vet...who couldn't see him that day. So I grabbed Gaven and found out where he had had to take Jimmer so often and they said to bring him in. They were incredibly nice and fast. As soon as I got there they took Barcadi to the back and I filled out paperwork. Then the vet came and got me and explained what he was finding and that he would like to do an X-Ray. The X-Ray showed a chip fracture at the top of his left back leg, which is way he was limping so bad. He was also in shock and so they wanted to put him on fluids so they could watch him for the rest of the day and then let me know how things were going. I was able to pick him up at the end of the day.

By the time we got home, you couldn't even tell he had been in an accident! His pain meds helped with that I'm sure because the next day he was acting mighty sore. Poor pup!!! As I said, we are super lucky that it wasn't worse and that he didn't end up dead.

More Ice Capades??? Sure!!!

2011-12-17T16:55:00.000-07:00

We planned to go ice skating again so that more people could make it...and then last minute we were still down four people - oh well!!

This time around, we made sure to bring the stroller so that we could take Asher out on the ice with us! It was super cute and we could do lots of fun twirls with him. We even played 'Catch the Stroller!'

Bronsynn was full of poses all night long:

Disco Ice Skaters:

Paul apparently felt that he needed some protection for his nugget, too bad that was a kid's helmet:

Having a good time:

Temple Lights

2011-12-17T14:02:00.001-07:00

Thursday night we went down town with Rachelle and Jesse as we did last year.

Asher was a ball of warmth! I didn't know how cold it was going to be and I wanted to be sure this little guy would be sufficiently warm so he had on a long sleeve onesie, some thermal type pants, a long sleeve thermal shirt, sweat pants, THREE pairs of socks, & slippers. AND THEN! on top of that a pair of pajamas, his romper and a super fuzzy hat! We wrapped him up in a blanket and wrapped a scarf around the front of his face to keep the wind from making his face cold.

Mission Accomplished!! He was so toasty warm he fell asleep on our little adventure!:

Rachelle & Jesse:

The four...woops, Five!.. of us near in front of the reflection pond:

I also made sure that I was super warm because I can not enjoy the lights if I am cold:

Love the colors in this pic!:

Yay! Christmas is almost here! I am always glad to be able to go the temple and have such beautiful reminders of why we celebrate Christmas!

I Want A Pony

2011-12-04T17:50:00.001-07:00

...or at least that's what I imagine he'd ask for if he could.

I am pretty sure that when Santa comes to you and the line is 10 people long that it is WAAAAAY better than finding Santa yourself and standing in a line of 100 people :)

Our ward Christmas party last night was such a hit and I loved Santa's little room. Asher was SOOO excited to meet Santa. ha ha, kidding of course. If the little tank knew what the hullabaloo was going on, I'm sure he would have been :)

Ice Ice Baby!!

2011-12-04T16:18:00.001-07:00

This year we switched it up and tried out the Olympic Oval for our new annual Ice Skating tradition. We liked it very much and since we were missing nearly half the family we are going to go again in a couple weeks. Yay!!

Paul and Asher:

Awww!!! Family photo! Asher says: "This is so gay. These people are lame. Why do I always have to pose for these things?? WHY???"

Amanda had quite the night....filled with many of these "Ohhhhhhh Snaaaaaaappp!!" in slow-mo. :) She is currently sporting many MANY bruises!:

Aiden was getting so frustrated because 'he couldn't skate'! I had to sit down with him and explain why he has to keep his skate flat so his toe pick wouldn't keep tripping him up. He was convinced that hockey skates would be so much better for him. We made him master the figure skates first and then he went and switched his skates...and just as we told him...he hated the hockey skates and switched back after one lap!

And towards the end of the night, the traffic was much less and so we just hung out at our spot and danced, and pretended to be Pros, and slid around, and Amanda, aka the Red Polar Bear, constantly took me and Amber down:

People Are Crazy

2011-11-30T15:11:00.001-07:00

I found something in the Black Friday ads that I really wanted. I had no hope of getting it, of course, but who knows? It was worth a shot and Bronsynn came with me for fun. The destinations: Walmart's 10:00 PM Sale.

We left from Thanksgiving dinner separately from Paul and when I saw the parking lot from Bangeter, I nearly kept on driving. I thought "Well maybe there will be room in the shops at the back." Ha Ha. What we noticed was people parking at the Home Depot across the street and running to Walmart.

New Plan: Drop Bronsynn off nearest the entrance without actually entering the zoo of a parking lot. Have her run in and scope things out. Find parking spot and join in.

Ha ha!!! Parking took a while as it made it's way under the highway and all the way back to the new Riverton Baseball diamonds. I did find a spot and made it twenty feet from the truck when Bronsynn called at 9:50 and said they started the sale early, it was a mad house, and everything was already gone.

Perfect. Well that was fun. I picked her up in the same place (seriously it was C.R.A.Z.Y. there) and she told me how the produce area was literally crammed tight like sardines with people waiting for the deals to open. She ran through people and ducked and twisted and got back to the DVD's and such and found people swarming it like it was the last morsel of food on earth. And THEN, she witnessed a man throw his daughter over people into a pile of barbies so that she could nab the one she wanted.

Sometimes I wonder at mankind.

Thanksgiving Festivities

2011-11-30T14:08:00.001-07:00

THANKSGIVING:

the act of giving thanks; grateful acknowledgment of benefits or favors, especially to God.

The thing I look forward to the most is traditions with family. I love that every year I get together with my female Madsens and spend an entire evening making and baking pies. I love that my dad's extended family comes over for a huge feast, usually the week before Thanksgiving. I love that it starts the Christmas season by name drawing. I love to have laughs at the dinner table and then spend the rest of the night sprawled over the carpet going through Black Friday ads (and then battling the crazies and early a.m. hours for a couple great deals).

This Thanksgiving was one of the funnest I've had. It started out with a little pie baking - Asher tagged along and kept me company while I made an Apple Crumble Pie.

Dallin helped out Grandma by separating pumpkin seeds so my mom could make Pumpkin Pie straight from the pumpkin!!!:

Then we enjoyed the company of all the Madsen's, which is really quite fun and crazy. I have a blast. It started off with some paper airplane making with Uncle Paul:

And Grandma showed these little whipper snappers how to make a real airplane, not one of those fancy schmancy ones from the airplane book :)

My camera battery unfortunately died and so I don't have any fun pics of the family.

But come Thanksgiving Day, my battery was fully charged and ready for action. This year was supposed to be our 'Off' year. However, for several reasons my family ended up being 'on' again, which ended up being great for us since Paul's family had to cancel due to a sick kid.

So initially my mom and dad were planning on taking Gaven and Amber out shooting...but then Paul and I had no where else to be so we joined in the fun...and then Amanda and Kenny didn't want to be left out so they came along as well! Almost a full house.

We headed clear the heck out to the boonies to shoot - and the setting was gorgeous and it was a BLAST! (ha ha pun not intended...or maybe it was)

It was a perfect day for Asher to wear his Carhartt gear! I was so excited to get a picture of him wearing this with my dad since my dad has Carhartt coming out of his ears! Isn't he CUTE??! (That was a rhetorical question. The answer is yes, of course).

We all got a kick out of Gaven's style for the day:

My high school sweetheart (literally, they were!) parents:

Later at dinner - our first Thanksgiving with Asher Pants:

Asher in a Johnny Jump-up for the first time....he'll work at the jumping part :)

Gaven took over Samantha's back tickling...with a pen. Morgan was given a 'Tramp Stramp.'

The boys played in Grandpa's hunting fort:

And Asher was victim of Dad!

That was a lot of photos I know...but I was too lazy to collage them.

Yay!!! Now to get busy with Christmas!

Lingonberries

2011-11-09T10:12:00.001-07:00

I'm so cultural!! Look at me eating Lingonberries! Ha ha.
The book series I'm reading takes place in Sweden and a couple of times it has mentioned Lingonberries. I was at Harmon's yesterday for some fondue supplies and I was pretty stoked to come across this! Gotta love Harmon's! Honestly, it tastes a bit like cranberry sauce - which would explain why I have a hankering to put some on my turkey in a couple weeks!

Took Ya Long Enough

2011-11-03T16:01:00.001-06:00

Seriously!! My garden has been ripped out and pretty much everything in my patio died last week with the frost...except this!!! It's November and my dahlia is just now blooming. Boo :( At least now I know where it will do well at for next year!

Frightfully Awesome Halloween!!!

2011-11-01T18:38:00.002-06:00

This year I was able to add even MORE to my outdoor haunted graveyard!!! Can't wait until I have a full on Haunted Attraction!

New this year...my homemade cocoon man (which does need some improvements...I was running short on time):

I love my Tombstone Lifter!!:

The Graveyard:

For our nummy treats I made a Snake calzone - it was pretty good! I think it's funny that the stuff oozed out and made it look like guts!:

This is my mummy with Spinach dip...It went a little retarded but still was nummy:

And, I had to have the Worm Brain!! (I also made this AND a Frankenstein brain for Debbie's party - I won scariest treat!!):

....And apparently the werewolf didn't like my treats and was on a strict diet of baby:

Becky and her little monkey!! Truman is soooo cute!:

And apparently werewolf likes monkey:

I heard this alot: "What are you??"

The answer to that question is: Selene, the vampire death dealer from Underworld. I hunt Werewolves...hence why Paul is a werewolf! And Asher had to match of course so he is a vampire too - I made him Coven Leader :)

We love our babies!!!

He hates this binkie so I had to hold it there to even get the picture:

And the rest are us having our usual geek-fest photo shoot!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

2011 Pumpkin Carving Party

2011-11-01T14:32:00.000-06:00

Ahhh Yes!! I look forward to this part of Halloween so much! Actually, I look forward to every part of Halloween...it's all just so much fun!!

As stated each year before, our Madsen clan carves pumpkins together ever year. The counter was lined in butcher paper and we all drew Halloween pictures over the entire thing! I love this: Happy Halluwen....by my nephew:

My evil pumpkin:

The tradition of soup in bread bowls. Everyone devours the cheesy potato soup so my mom just made it simple this year and made the one kind instead of several:

I have an AWESOME Jello brain mold and had lots of fun with it this Halloween. This is the worm infested brain and Amanda is doing open-brain surgery on it:

Slurping up yummy worms:

Say 'Worms!!!!':

Let the Pumpkin Carving begin!!!:

Hello Husband! Paul does the gutting and I do the carving... team effort:

Samantha is camera shy....except when she feels like doing this:

Aiden:

"Move outta my way! I'm watchin' the game!!" (The BYU/Texas game, that is!):

Amber, Dallin, Bronsynn, & Aiden:

Look at my cute Lil' Monster!!!! I love this outfit!!!

But not as much as I love this face!!:

Look at the belly! He almost matches the pumpkin!:

Of course, Mr. Dal's October b-day gets celebrated. He gets a cool Halloween cake every year - this year...the mummy!!!:

Bullseye:

Other birthdays we celebrated would be....

Sam:

Morgan:

and Amber!:

After we sang and ate cake and rootbeer floats, we went outside to admire everyone's handy work. The best part about this is, Paul and Gaven got on their werewolf masks and completely scared the PANTS OFF of Dallin and Aiden. I wish it wouldn't have been so dark so that I could have video taped it cuz it was hilarious!!!

And after that, we grabbed the brain and devoured it!!:

Ever seen Drop Dead Fred???

Aiden and Dallin after being scaredy cats :)

It was such a fun night!! We laughed so hard and had mountains of fun! So sad that it's already over :(

Halloween Festivities...BEGIN!!!

2011-10-22T13:37:00.001-06:00

Yay!!! It's seems like it's been awhile since I've put up the decorations so it feels good to get some more Halloween Festivities under way!

Every year Amber takes her boys to the pumpkin patch to pick out their pumpkin and my mom goes along to treat them to those pumpkins. I now have a kid so I get to go! (Really I just happened to be at my mom's when they were getting ready to go and I tagged along :) ha ha)

Dallin and Aiden: I love that they have mini wheelbarrows for the kids to wheel themselves!:

Rows and rows of pumpkins as far as the eye can see...til the end of the lot:

Amber debating on which pumpkin would be the finest pumpkin to maliciously carve up:

And Dallin took FOREVER to find one that was big, round, AND tall:

My baby all snug in his sling and wrapped up all warm:

Our first trip to the Pumpkin Patch:

Dallin and Aiden on one of the many places they have set up for pictures - such a fun thing!:

Amber with her boys:

They had tonz of old farming equipment all lined up with cute signs! They even had two different corn mazes that the kids just ran and ran through!:

Farmer Dallin:

Best Buds!

2011-10-22T13:27:00.004-06:00

Me and my fellow new mom, Becky Lou, have had lots of fun being new moms and building a strong foundation for our chil'ren to be best friends ha ha!!

It's kinda weird to be in the club of 'arranging play dates for our kids'

Here's Asher (7 weeks) and Truman - only 1 week old:

Stinkin' cute!!!

And here they are at about 2 months (Asher) and 1 month (Truman):

Truman is saying "What punk?? You wanna mess with this? What foo'???" And Asher is just rolly polly and having a jolly good time!

Awwwww! Right??

Twenties Girl

2011-10-17T15:09:00.000-06:00

This book is the latest read from my Book Club. Sophie Kinsella is such a funny author with great stories that she is quite addicting.

This book will make you laugh a lot as the main character goes about trying to help her Great Aunt's ghost...yes, a ghost! It's a great story...highly recommend the read ;)

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

2011-10-17T15:05:00.002-06:00

So here's one that I finally got around to reading. I bought this book on my Kindle ages and ages ago because it was on a Daily Deal....however, I read a chapter and just could not get into it at the time. I meant to get back to it a lot sooner than I did but I was burned out with reading and didn't have the time anyway.

I didn't know what to expect with this book because I had purposely stayed away from it because I don't like spoilers. It's a more mature read for sure... definitely not something for the Young Adult genre but despite that I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was so fascinating once you got into the story line and it was almost like there were two stories in one. It was a good mystery discovering a bad person and their horrendous deeds (the book was originally titled Men Who Hate Women so let your imagination run with that if you choose).

I am super excited for the movie. Daniel Craig will be in it and he's a fantastic actor. The trailer seems promising and even Paul thinks it's gonna be an interesting movie and I didn't tell him one single bit about the book.

2 Months...Already???

2011-10-16T17:42:00.000-06:00

A few (a very few) of my favorite pictures of my babe:

At 2 months Asher....

...weighs 14 lb 9 oz, nearly doubling his birth weight of 8 lb 1 oz and putting him in the 96th percentile. Everybody comments on what a big 2 month baby I have - and a big baby he is!

...measures 24 inches, about 4.5 inches taller than birth making him in the 84th percentile.

....and his head, well that is average at 15.7 inches in the 49th percentile.

Over the last two months I have marveled at the fact that I carried this perfect little guy inside me for 9 months...that every kick or squirm I felt from my stowaway was this adorable little guy.

I feel sadness at how fast he's grown, at the incredible difference in him in only two short months. I loved the newborn stage, I loved how tiny he was and the way he curled around my body...I loved so many things.

But while it saddens me that he's growing so fast it's also so very exciting and fun. I love that he coos more and more. I love his cute smile, how much he smiles, the dimples that accompany all those smiles and I love trying to find more ways to make him smile. I love that his legs dangle while he's in my lap and he kicks them about.

He loves his baths and stares at me the entire time.

He smiles every time I rub his diaper line along his tummy when I change his bum.

He sucks on his fingers, thumb or his entire fist when he's becoming hungry.
He snorts when he is REALLY hungry.

He is so picky about binkies. He likes one kind one minute and another kind the next.

He makes the cutest little 'oh' sound when he yawns and his mouth makes an 'O', too.

He's a big eater...as is evidenced above.

He's becoming ticklish, his sides make him squirm the most.
He falls asleep on my chest with his nose smooshed against me and it's adorable.

I can't help but kiss him a thousand times a day. I love every sigh, yawn, smile and sound that comes out of him and every face he makes. I LOVE being his mom ;)

And to sorta document how fast he's grown, we tried to show the difference in him since he popped into our lives :)

Asher's Blessing

2011-10-14T16:35:00.002-06:00

My little baby was blessed Sunday, October 9th!

I was so thrilled to finally put him in his little dress shirt with rolled up sleeves, his green and silver paisley tie, and his sneakers with little skulls on the tongue!!! Truthfully, I pride myself on his little outfit and how P.I.M.P he looked on his day! Love, love, loved it!!

I was so happy for the perfect weather, especially since it was awful rainy weather all week. It was such a nice day and I truly had a great time mingling in our backyard with friends and family. It meant a lot to me to have so many there and if I'd had the room and money, I would have done more! If you know me, you know I love throwing shindigs and Asher's blessing was a fun shindig to throw. I couldn't have asked for a better day!

The kiddies ran around playing with each other and the big guys:

The girls relaxed on the swing:

The guys tossed a football and played some b-ball:

The brother-in-law posed for GQ:

The grandparents and great-grandparents chillaxed:

The sister vogued:

The brothers wrestled:

The fam hung out:

And Asher slept and slept as he went from one person to the next all snuggled up in the blanket my mom made for this day :)

And here's us with Becky and Judd and cute little Truman:

And thank you so much to everyone who helped me out and brought stuff - you rock!!!

Karen's Big Day :)

2011-10-12T18:47:00.000-06:00

Yay!!!!

Karen, my dear sweet roommate from college, was sealed to her cool hubby on Friday, September 30th in the Logan, UT temple. It was wonderful news to hear that she would be sealed to her husband and cute little baby and I was super duper happy that I was invited to come and see it. I love being a part of sealings!

This is Karen, Masen and baby Hooper coming out of the temple after the sealing:

They had a photographer there to take pictures so while they were doing family shots, I took some photos of the temple and such - it was really so pretty. I had never been to the Logan temple before, only seen it from afar.

Me and the Hubs:

Amanda and Spencer:

Ash! I can't believe I didn't get a picture of you!! Sorry hunny!

But I do have this lovely photo of me taken by Paul....lovely angle, I know:

Ashley took some goofy photos for Paul and I: here I am rescuing the damsel in distress....all in a days work for me!

And then the damsel in distress wouldn't come with the handsome, I mean beauteeeful, rescuer and so she had to beg...and plead...and cry....and throw a fit:

The four of us - we missed you Lou!! Next time plan that baby better will ya???

Me, Karen, Ashley, Amanda:

Afterwards, everyone was treated to pizza and pasta at Firehouse Pizza. I thought it was way nummy but even better was the several hours we were able to sit and chat and have fun with each other. It was such a great night! I loved it!

Laborly Weekend

2011-09-15T15:32:00.002-06:00

Yet another year that Paul and I spend laboring about on Labor Day. One day we are going to HAVE to get out and go do something!! But it felt really nice to get stuff done around the house and have things looking like normal again.

My dad was home for the weekend and so to ensure everyone's attendance, we got together on Sunday for a sweet little BBQ. Unfortunately, it's still Labor Day weekend and so Kenny and Bronsynn were camping with Kenny's family and poor Sam is working 16 hour shifts every Saturday and Sunday while she is going to school to finish her degree so I have no idea when we will ever see her again.

My dad had come home the week of my due date and we all had big hopes that Asher would make his debut then...but we all know that he didn't and so at three weeks old this is the first time my dad was able to see his third grandson.

I love being able to eat and laugh out on the patio. It's my favorite. These dogs drive us all crazy running around knocking people down so we have to forbid them from coming onto the patio while we are there.

After dinner, we headed to the new baseball park and we had a little friendly game of softball. I love playing softball! The only thing I could do was stand out in the field with a mitt and hope the ball came toward me. And when I was up to bat I had to have a runner. My dad used to play softball in a league and he's still got it! That's dirt all over his clothes because he'd run for the ball and always end up on the ground. One time he tried to stop the ball from crossing the line by throwing his mitt at it on the ground. It was a 'had-to-be-there' moment:

My sister is a big jokester and made us laugh really hard on the short ride home. This is her...on the outside of the car:

And when we got back for Banana Splits, we slapped a bunch of candles on the gallon of ice cream and sang to my lovely mother who recently had a birthday :)

I love that Gaven provides his own kind of trick candle at the end.

Married!!!....Finally!

2011-09-14T11:38:00.011-06:00

Warning: I have a buttload of pics in this post!!

YES!!! FINALLY!!

Paul's brother was married to his girlfriend of 8 years on August 27th up at the Legacy Lodge in Park City. It was a fantastic wedding...one that we've all been waiting for for a really long time!! Hilary and I started dating these handsome brothers the same year around the same exact time. Our friend, Judd, used to refer to me as 'Becky's friend with the Eternal Boyfriend' because Paul and I dated 4 years before marrying. Well, these two have us beat!! But they are now official.

They were married on the mountain at the top of the Ski Lift. The wedding was delayed shortly because of some thunder storms but when it was all safe, we all met as rehearsed and prepared for a truly great wedding!

B.J. with his brothers, Paul and Matt:

Add their little sister, Zoyie, into the mix:

My handsome man and I, only two weeks after our own 4 year wedding anniversary (and two weeks after our son was born!):

The entire wedding party and all guests attending the ceremony rode up by Ski Lift. We who were walking waited at the top and here is Paul GQ'in it up - such a stud:

It is EXTREMELY hot up on the mountain at this time of day. We melted the night before at the rehearsal and it was doubly bad this day. Waiting for the bride to arrive seemed to take forever with the heat but eventually we spotted her!

The bride, her parents, and brother:

She made a gorgeous bride. I loved her hair, her veil, the dress, the flowers and all the coordinating colors. It was magnificent!!

We walked down the aisle in pairs to traditional wedding music. B.J. was, of course, eagerly awaiting!:

They included their grandparents that have passed - there are four candles on top of the wood tower - one for Grandpa Budd and three for Hilary's grandparents who all passed in the last couple years:

And she made it down the aisle with her dad:

Giving Hilary away to her man:

The ceremony was very sweet and filled with laughs. It was totally great!:

And when it was over they walked away to the song "Say Hey (I Love You)". So cute!!

While all their guests made their way down to the Lodge, we had pictures done and I snapped away!

Hilary:

Zoyie with Antonio and Angelia (children of Paul's cousin):

The Budd family:

Hilary with her flower girls (so adorable!):

BJ and Hilary with their Best Men and Matron of Honor:

When pictures were done we headed down for Cocktail Hour while the Bride and Groom had their own pictures done. And how did everyone get down the mountain? Why the Alpine Slides of course!!! That lady up at the front on the right is Hilary's last grandparent and she rode down. She's seriously awesome. She's always walking around in her stylish outfits and heels!:

And yes, the bride and groom came down the same way. I don't have a picture because they were too far away to capture, but all of us on the deck of the Lodge had a view of them heading down the mountain and cheered them in!! Hilary's best friend bedazzled this garbage bag so that Hilary's dress would stay nice and contained!

Cocktail Hour was cut a little short because we were off schedule due to the rain. Everyone took their drinks inside to find their seating. It was so gorgeous! It was all set up so nice:

Then when we were all seated, B.J. and Hilary were announced and made their Grand Entrance as the new Mr. and Mrs. Budd!

We were served dinner and then toasts were made by both sets of parents, the Best Man (Paul), the Matron of Honor, Hilary's brother, and lastly Matt...which he was so scared to do a toast and politely declined giving one...and then the wedding coordinator misunderstood and gave Matt's name to the announcer and all of us (the family seating with each other) started laughing and turned to see Matt's face turn white! He did give a toast though and he did a good job!

The Groom's parents:

Paul as Best Man:

The Cake was cut soon after that!

Right after that they had their dance...which they took actual ballroom lessons for. They waltzed to At Last :

And then!!! The party began!! There was dancing and a whole lot of it the rest of the night! It was so much fun. I love this picture - B.J. has to dance WITH his drink:

Paul and I partyin' it up:

B.J. surprising us all with his dance moves...we had no idea he could dance!

And then the bouquet and garter was tossed, it was too dark in the building though for the videos that I shot. Soon after we lined up outside and lit sparkles and they ran down the sparklers into their horse-carriage and made their get-away (which was just to go around the parking lot and circle back around to their suite ha ha)!

It was about 11:30 by the time Paul and I left Park City to go and pick up Asher. My mom tended him for us for both nights. We were so exhausted and knew that we would need to take power naps at my mom's before we headed home. We woke up at 2 a.m. and went home. Paul gave Asher the rest of his bottle but he was zonked out - aren't they handsome??:

Yay for weddings!!! Such a fun night!!

Whoopsie Daisy

2011-09-11T19:58:00.005-06:00

The family congregated to help my mom out with a little yard work and heavy lifting. A wedding reception was taking place later that week and besides that, she just wanted things to get done and look nice. Since my dad is out of town she needed help doing all the hard stuff. So after working outside a couple hours (I would have liked to, honestly, but alas I was put on task as the food maker), we all enjoyed fresh made BLT's with garden tomatoes (nearly the best thing on the planet).

It also happened to be Amanda's 35th birthday :) We didn't mention to her that we would be celebrating so we thought we'd try to make it a surprise. I had brownies in the oven and warmed them a little while she wasn't paying attention. Then I had Bronsynn take her outside so I could get the candles on and lit....but I only got as far as getting the candles on before Amanda came waltzing back inside. So I hurried and shoved the brownies back in the oven. While we were trying to get everyone gathered back in the kitchen, find a stupid lighter and light her stupid candles with her sitting right there the whole time, (and my mother was no help with this since everytime I tried to whisper something to her she would answer back really loud, for example "There should be a lighter on top of the fridge" or "You want me to do what?" Seriously. Does no one understand the concept of stealth??) the surprise was no longer a surprise. So I just brought the darn brownies out of the oven and then busted up laughing.

Earth to Maghann: putting brownies with candles in a warm oven results in melted candles.

But it looked very....festive, right?? Unique, even. In fact, I meant for that to happen. At least there was ice cream to compliment them :)

Silver Lake 'Hike'

2011-09-11T19:52:00.002-06:00

The day before Paul went back to work, we decided to get out of the house and do something together before life got back to busy. I was looking forward to it very much since I would be trapped at home for the next couple weeks. We drove up Big Cottonwood to walk around the lake, or as I call it, the Swamp. It was nice walk on a nice night with very nice scenery I thought I would share :)

This has always been my favorite view:

Asher's Arrival

2011-09-10T15:44:00.002-06:00

Look at me! I'm blogging about the birth of my child...one month after he's born!! Okay so I have to admit that sorting through all my photos was a bit daunting. And then there's the whole time factor. I knew that having a newborn baby was time consuming, but it is one thing to know it and another to experience it. Anyhooslebees, I'm blogging now so that's all that matters :)

On to the show!

Many people are asking me about 'my story' and how it all went down. It's not the craziest or most dramatic tale to tell but it was definitely different than what I expected to happen and I've been told by more than one person that I have the worst luck in the world. I agreed.

So everyone knows that I went around saying that my baby would come at the end of July. Asher was due on August 2nd but I wanted a July baby so bad. There's just too many birthdays and anniversaries and such happening in my family in August. Well, July went by and I was only dilated to a 2 so I was obviously having an August baby. I thought for sure he would come the week of his due date. It would interfere with several major things but better that week than the next week. But baby still wasn't listening to me and at 41 weeks I was scheduled to go in a be induced the day after my 4 year wedding anniversary. I was not happy.

Paul and I heading into the hospital Tuesday morning at 7:30 am, about to become parents...

...or so we thought.

Here I am in my gown - we signed papers, we answered questions, I had my IV put in and my monitors hooked up AND THEN I was told that my doctor was in a motorcycle accident and not only that but he was the on-call doctor as well.

We were sent home....to wait around....all day.

We were told to come back that night at 8 and then there would be someone to take his place as my doctor. So here we go again, new room, new gown, three more holes put in my body to get the new IV in, more signing papers and more waiting around.

Paul was an excellent picture taker during our stay at the hospital, which thankfully we were able to get down to four days instead of the five we were initially expecting. One such photo was to capture Asher's heart rate on the monitor! This was one of his better moments:

Let me explain. I was given medicine to thin me out a bit before they actually gave me the drip to start inducing. After that my contractions started. Late at night, or rather early in the morning, my nurse came in and put me on oxygen. Asher's heart rate was doing a dropping a little too low:

My contractions got worse and so did the Asher's heart rate. At four in the morning I received my epidural, which was awesome. I was getting mighty of sick of the never-ending contraction that lasted 45 minutes and all the poking and prodding didn't feel too good, either. We didn't sleep much since the nurses were in and out quite often to help me switch sides I was laying on. Asher didn't like me being on my left side too well though and I was constantly having to go back on my right side.

As the night progressed, I was told that I was thinning, but Asher's head wasn't coming down any further. I was only dilated to a 4 and when they broke my water, they discovered that Asher had has a bowel movement. I was put on more monitors to better watch his heart rate and my contractions. A little before noon on Wednesday I was told that if his heart rate didn't get better that I would have to have a C-Section. I digested this information and thought that everything would be okay because at the time, Asher's heart rate was doing okay. I talked to Paul about having a blessing but didn't even get to go that far because the nurse came right back in and said they were taking me in for the C-Section stat.

It felt weird - that I would be having a baby this way instead of the way I thought I would. And I was disappointed majorly at it. I tried really hard not to cry. At once they were getting Paul ready for the surgery, the anesthesiologist was there and the nurse was bustling about and I barely got a text off to my mom to let her know what was happening and before I knew it I was here:

My wonderful doctor was there to assist his partner (his accident was minor) one handed (since he had a shoulder injury). He said he wouldn't miss it for the world, which was nice. But the experience of being on an operating table for the first time in my life was not nice. I wasn't completely numb when I felt the knife, or anything else that they did. I could feel the tug and pull of everything they did only it wasn't just the pressure I was supposed to feel, it was pain and a whole lot of it. I pretty much felt like I was getting my guts ripped out, which I guess in a sense I was only I wasn't supposed to feel it. It was the worst experience of my life and I nearly threw up from the pain, except my anesthesiologist gave me something for that and the nausea went away. He, the anesthesiologist, was telling me it was almost over - the head was out, the body was out, etc. And then I heard my baby cry and it was surreal and out of this world because I didn't feel like I just had a baby. Paul went to take pictures of Asher and thankfully soon after that, I was able to be almost knocked out. As they sewed and stapled me shut, I could feel what they were doing but I was thankfully not in anymore pain. And then I was transferred back to my bed, my baby was put in my arms and I was wheeled back in my room only twenty minutes after I had left it.

I didn't feel an immediate connection to my baby...which I didn't like but I knew it wasn't completely abnormal. I felt too doped up and wiped out. I was upset with the C-section but Asher made it here safely and that's all that matters:

Weighing in at 8 lbs, 1 oz, 19.5 inches long.

Getting his footprints:

I had to be doped up more in my Labor and Deliver room because I was still in an incredible amount of pain when the nurse was checking things out. She said I shouldn't be feeling anything by that time but somehow I was. After that, Asher was put in my arms again and I was wheeled to my new room. We had a couple hours to ourselves but I was out of it for most of it by the time family arrived to meet him.

Paul went to give Asher his first bath:

And Asher's sucking on his hand which is something he does when he is hungry:

He apparently is a Ute fan already and half the family is NOT okay with that :) This was Amanda's doing and she also bought him a U onesie:

The worst part about surgery is the leg things. I itched and itched and itched. I had my mom and Paul take these off every 20 minutes or so and itch my legs as hard as they could. I was so happy when I was able to start walking around so that I could get these things off for good!:

VISITORS!

Kenny:

Paul's brother B.J. - first time Uncle!

My brother and sister, Asher is their 3rd nephew:

Hilary, B.J.'s fiance at the time - first time Aunt!:

My sister Amber, her first nephew!:

My mom and her mom:

My brother, Morgan and his wife, Sam:

The first time I really got to hold my baby and just be with him:

I love this picture. I love his hair...although he's lost most of it by now:

Like I said, we were able to go home a little earlier. We couldn't stand one more night in the hospital and I was ready to sleep in my own bed...which felt like Heaven after being in that hospital bed for so long. So we got him dressed up to go home:

And put in his carseat - can you tell how much he liked that??:

And off we went! Bringing him home felt good and strange. Strange to not be the only two people living in this house, dog not included. Strange to put a little tiny baby in his crib and watch him sleep. Strange to have your life turned around and not centered around yourself and your spouse anymore. But all of that is also very wonderful at the same time. After speaking with my doctor before we left, we found out that I have a very thin uterus and run the risk of rupturing during a regular delivery. Add that to the health risk my baby could have faced by going the normal way and that makes me very grateful for the way everything DID turn despite the fact that I hated every second of it. I guess I wasn't that unlucky after all.

Un-Post-able

2011-09-08T13:27:00.002-06:00

So there are several blogs that I just cannot leave comments on no matter what I do! It's frustrating me. Blogger pisses me off. To all my friends that don't see my comments - I read you blog! I like you blog! And I've tried to comment on your blog! If I get some time, I will again try to figure this shiznit out. But right now, I'm lucky if I can get on the computer at all!

Newborn Baby

2011-08-22T17:20:00.004-06:00

So most everyone knows what I've been up to lately. I need to post about this life-changing event of mine...I just need the time to upload pictures and get them all straightened out. But in the mean time, here's the link to just a few of the newborn pictures that we had done last Thursday by Megan Hall Photography. She was recommended to me by my friend and I recommend her to anyone else! She was great and I'm so stinkin' excited to see the rest of my pictures when they are ready :)

County Fair

2011-08-07T17:58:00.006-06:00

Bronsynn's last 4-H show of the year was this past weekend, the 5th and 6th. It's a two-day event because it's County Fair time...YAY!!!!!!!!! I always loved the last show.

The first day was all the show events so again, we had to make the horse look super pretty and shiny!

He cleans up real nice!! I love him. We spray stuff all over him and his mane and tail called Show Sheen. It's a pretty decent size bottle and I remember that one bottle used to last three of us the entire year or more. This horse went through one bottle in two shows. That's how slick that sucker is. Amanda makes sure that he's the shiniest horse in town for sure!

Speaking of Amanda...she and I busted our guts all day long. It was a day for mishaps and laughing so hard you cried! She bent down to start putting hoof polish on BJ's front hoof and three seconds after she started, he bent the other front hoof and his knee knocked her hand...the hand that held the bottle of black paint...which splashed all over her. OMG I laugh again just writing this. She popped up so fast and at first I had know idea it happened, I just saw him move his leg. But the look on her face when she came up and looked like this:

Priceless!!!! My baby gut hurt SO bad from laughing!! It was on her face and in her hair...good thing she wore black! The only thing that would get that stuff off was the baby oil we use for the horse and a whole lot of rubbin'!!!

Then we went to go sit and watch Bronsynn do her Western Pleasure. I took this umbrella and popped it open...only I guess I'm too strong and I popped it too far!!!

We were done pretty early that day as Bronsynn doesn't compete in the Bareback show event and she was first in line all day. Phew!!!

Saturday was all the speed events...always my favorite part of the show. Because it's County Fair, all of the contestants participate in a grand entry and get to ride into the arena, as announced. They all dress up and have fun with this day so it's fun to see the stuff people come up with. Our club did the 80's and since Bronsynn is such a fashionista, I think she took this part more seriously than she did for the actual stuff of importance.

Amanda and I took the job of dressing BJ up very seriously as well. Since side ponies were all the rage, and Bronsynn had one, BJ needed to have one, too. So here he is getting his forelock extension put in....

...with his neon colored mane extensions AND crimped hair!!!!....

...a scrunchie to match Bronsynn and, yes, it's off to the side!....

...can't forget the tail...

...with pink 'leg warmers' to complete the look!! Ta da!!!!! He was seriously the coolest looking horse!

Alright, maybe not as cool as the giraffe-painted horse (gotta admit that's pretty cool!!!!):

But cool none-the-less!! It was a VERY long, hot day. The club ended the day and the year with a potluck BBQ and we headed home. I was barely moving by the end of this event. I can't even tell you how many times I was stopped so people could ask me what on earth I was doing outside on a day like today, when was I due, etc. etc. Have to admit, I was wondering both questions myself.

Bombs and Booms :)

2011-08-07T17:41:00.005-06:00

This is what we were up to again on the 24th of July. :) Happily, my dad made another trip home and we spent the night making more bombs to try and get our bucket as high as we did on the 4th. Quite a good time.

Bronsynn even agrees:

Days of 47

2011-08-07T17:36:00.004-06:00

Not much to report but I did want to note that we went to the Days of '47 Rodeo for the first time ever on Saturday July 23rd (which also happened to be Papa's birthday!). I find it strange that I've never been to this rodeo. But we had much fun, the two of us. I wanted to kill a couple obnoxious people and can't help but wonder why so many people are retarded. Speaking of retarded...my niece said the news said that retarded is now considered a swear word?? Anybody else hear that? If so I say 'Eff the whole lot of retards that decided retard is a officially a swear word.' How do you do that anyway??

Baby Shower w/ My Friends!

2011-07-22T13:15:00.004-06:00

Yesterday my sweet friends threw me a baby shower (I swear that's my last one!! ha ha). I walked in to see such cute things as this banner:

...and my first ever diaper cake (the cutest one ever!!!):

...these cute toys and binkies hanging around:

with lots of nummy food, including taco salad and dips, fruit kabobs and, my favorite, eclairs!!! Yum Yum Yum :)

I want to thank all my friends that showed up. I know it was hard for a lot of people to make it so those who did come it really meant a lot! Here's a few things we made away with!

Cheryl gave Asher some seriously cute Carhart gear - a camo onsie and an orange with a tractor on it. I think my dad will love those when he sees Asher in them! And cute little Mikaili helped me open up my presents!:

Karen got me a cute bouncer...I'd show you a picture but I look like I was spawned of Satan in it....which is funny cuz I got told that I was spawned of Satan a lot when I was in high school. ha ha. Ashley got me some 'me stuff' ' - {wink wink} & Deb gave me lotion for myself, lotion and bath stuff for my baby.

Amanda with her daughter, Tenley, and Karen!:

Cheryl, Becky Lou, and Debbie Lee Snack Cakes, as I like to call her:

Becky is the one who made me that cute diaper cake, here's a close up:

I love this monkey on top - LOVE, LOVE it:

And Amanda gave me everything I could need for my diaper bag. Half the stuff in there I never would have thought of putting in my diaper bag! But lucky for me, I'm surrounded by people who have done this once or twice and I'm learning buttloads of helpful information!

And it just so happens that my Petunia Pickle Bottom diaper bag came today and so I had fun filling it with all the goodies Amanda supplied me!! Thank you!!!

Also, Amanda has a fun Silhouette machine she gets to have all sorts of fun with. So after all the guests had gone, she got it out and cut out these adorabley awesome characters and ironed them on the onesies that were in the basket. I got to watch her work her magic. Aren't they cute?? I LOVE LOVE LOVE them!!!

Thank you for all the hard work! Thank you for making it special for me! Thank you all for everything!! I'm so spoiled!! :)

Ta-Daaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!

2011-07-18T18:38:00.005-06:00

Remember when I 'sneak peaked' you this pic??

Well I finally have my crib...it's finally set up...and it's finally ready to show!!

This Asher's new slumber pad :)

Here's an upclose look at the pattern of the material used for the bumpers and the crib sheet. It's acutally a little softer green than this but the picture makes it looks super limey.

The skirt is white on top, black & white checker in the middle and then black on bottom. You can't see the black very well because of where we have the mattress positioned right now. Eventually it will go down and you will see it the way it's meant to be shown...

...but here's a close up for now:

I like the pleats in the skirt and the colors put together. I'm working on getting everything put together the way I want and then I'll have more pictures. :) But I'm super pleased with how it looks. Now I just need the baby.....

Baby Shower w/ My Ward!

2011-07-18T18:07:00.004-06:00

So later on in the evening on Thursday, my ward threw me a baby shower! It was so extremely sweet of them...I felt so very, well, showered!! Har har har.

I really dig the chicks in my ward who helped throw this party and all those women (and man) who came to it! I feel so appreciative of everything!

When I walked in I saw this cute Onesie Banner that Alaina made for me. Love it!!!

Check out this cool balloon - it's going in my baby's room fo' sho':

One of my best friends couldn't make it due to traveling plans, but she was there in spirit...or rather in husband :) If you could read the sticker on his shirt it would say "Hello, My Name is Teresa" :) So clever and cute of them. And Paul (with his cute daughter) came with his own picked out and wrapped up present...a toy sword to fight off the dragons & wrapped in the comics! On the package he wrote: "For the Incubus". Inside joke.

Here am I being so spoiled in presents:

Some of my cool friends that I love:

More spoilage!!!:

The tasty treats and eats at the table!:

And more of my awesome friends:

Seriously, thanks to everyone who put in the time, work & money and for those who came bearing gifts to help us out. Words can't express the gratitude!!

Baby Shower w/ Paul's Work!

2011-07-18T18:00:00.002-06:00

Paul informed that my presence was requested at his office for a luncheon on Thursday afternoon. It came as quite a surprise when I found out that his work wanted to throw us a little shower! Totally unexpected, totally appreciated and it was totally fun!! Ha ha

I walked into an amazing spread of food...they ordered some food from Out of The Box and then everyone pitched and did potluck. Enchiladas and sandwhich rolls and chips and all sorts of stuff. It was so yummy!

We all ate in the large conference room and I had a great time laughing at jokes and office banter. One of which would be Benny, my brother's best friend. He works at there now and is quite the comedian. He had all of us crying from laughing so hard. It was super fun. He also provided a pretty little present, wrapped up by Nadia:

And it was these adorabe little onesies that he had Becky embroider. The office got a kick out of the Adcentives West one:

Since I've been showered plenty and still had more to go, I made Paul be the present opener, especially since these people know and love him and that's why they were throwing this thing!

They were all so incredibly generous and we received some great stuff!:

I had to include a pic of the cupcakes that Nadia made...super cute and delish!

Paul works with some really great people. That company has family but they are all a big family, hardly any coming and going. So with as long as they have all worked together, I have gotten to know a few of them and chat here and there with others and they are all super nice and fun. I really like them and I appreciate them going to such lengths for us! Such a great 'surprise' and so appreciated!!

Baby Shower w/ My Family!

2011-07-12T10:10:00.002-06:00

Saturday, my wonderful family threw me a baby shower and I (or rather, Asher) came away with some really great and awesome things. I feel so spoiled and loved! Thanks to any family reading my blog that came to the shower - it really is so appreciated and I loved having everyone there that could make it!!

My mom put together a Mexican-type salad bar (sooooo good) and then we had mini Taquitos, fruit salsa, Cowboy salsa, & guacamole with chips. Seriously...the fruit salsa and Cowboy salsa are amazing. And for dessert, my mother-in-law provided sherbet and sprite 'floats' :) It was all so delicious - again I appreciate it so much!

Here are a few things that are now piled in my baby's room, waiting for the day when I can start organizing...I mean nesting. :)

From my In-laws - a developmental gym, car seat dangly bug toys, several adorable receiving blankets, some really cute outfits from Carter's with the monkey's and frogs on the bum (love the bums!!), a soft blanket, and socks, hangers and stuff. Wow!!!

From my family - a nice bouncer and lots of cash so that I can go get my Petunia Pickle Bottom diaper bag -----YAYYYYY!!!!!

This stellar outfit is from my Aunt Karen - who apprently had help from her boys! So funny and I love the outfit (it's so Paul) and I LOVE those shoes!:

From Paul's aunt and cousin - a baby bath, bath toys for when he's older, bowls, spoons, food storage thing, bottle brush and a few other misc things!:

From Paul's grandparents - our umbrella stroller, plastic bibs, Aveeno bath stuff and some wipes:

We also got sleeper pajama 'bags' from Aunt Kristie, Bibs and more cash from my cute little Grandma, muslim swaddling blankets (so excited for those!) with a portable changing pad from my Aunt Rosemary and cousin Crystal, a box of diapers (thank you!) and baby sling from my Aunt Clarice and cousins Ashleigh, Nicole and Lily, and a super soft blanket and baby monitors from sister-in-law, Hilary!!

Like I said...Spoiled!!! Having a baby shower started making this whole thing incredibly real. Weird how the big baby belly didn't do it for me but a room full of baby stuff does. So crazy!!!!! Now where is my crib so I can get my room together?!!!!

THANK YOU AGAIN!!!

Patio Post

2011-07-09T10:17:00.005-06:00

So this material in my earlier post....

...was used to cover this old ugly cushion.

My patio furniture needed an upgrade and I finally got it finished. I used to have some before pictures of it but they got lost somewhere. But you can see the difference, right?

I made a few changes and that included the sides and corners of each cushion. It made it look much cleaner and it was much simpler to do than all that piping.

The old cushions hooked onto the furniture with velcro. But what I learned that velcro left outside becomes less and less velcro-ey and the cushions would NEVER stay put. If a wind storm came up, I had to gather cushions from all over my yard. So I swapped the velcro tabs for tie-on strings. Also, the old cushions were sewn together and so there was no way to take the covers off to wash them. I closed them shut with, yes, velcro, but it won't be exposed like the other velcro tabs were.

And after giving the patio set a fresh coat of hammered-texture black paint, making the whole set look much nicer and sharper, it was finally finished and ready to be put together. It's about time because my backyard and my patio is my favorite place to be if I'm at home chillin':

The final product:

Just in time for a friend get together with some good friends from High School. We enjoyed BBQ chicken, cheese fondue (duuuhhhh), salad and some delicious cherries. It was a way nice evening and even nicer to have cushions to sit on - and cute ones at that!

While I'm at it, I'll show you my flower pots that got a make-over, too. These pots used to be green and then they were all spray-painted black for my wedding. After nearly 4 years, the paint was coming off and they were very weathered. So I spruced them up and made them happier and more cheerful:

I love all the colors but I especially like my purple one. Grow Dahlia, grow I say!!!:

And now since we're on flowers, let's move to the garden! It's coming along really great so far. We have the watering system set up even better than last year and have three seperate groups that have different watering frequencies and lengths.

I have five different tomato plants, one of which is an heirloom I'm excited for. The typical zucchini, summer squash, crook neck squash, lemon cucumber, beans, carrots (which don't ever do so well in my garden) and beets. I used to do corn but I'm not a believer in the nutritional value of corn and since I haven't been able to get corn to grow well the couple of years, I ditched it.

New this year is lilac, jalepeno and pablano peppers (as well as sweet red and green), red onions, green onions, potatoes and garlic.

I already have some Sugary cherry tomatoes coming on (very nummy!) and a few peppers. I can't wait for everything, especially the tomatoes!

4th of July Shenanigans

2011-07-09T08:57:00.007-06:00

We had a lot of fun stuff going on over our 4th weekend. It was SO. INCREDIBLY. AWESOME. to have my husband home for a longer weekend. Work only got in the way a little bit and the rest of the time was just us and fun. He needed it!! He helped me accomplish some stuff around the house that I cannot do alone while sporting around my baby belly and the rest was relaxation :)

We went to our friend's house to watch the Riverton parade on Friday. She lives right on the road that it comes by so we were able to just park our bums in front of her house in some lawn chairs and watch the kids go nuts about the candy. Paul and I don't care for parades at all but it was a good reason to get together with friends we haven't seen in awhile. I thought the entire parade was super lame, minus some bikers and rollerskaters. The only truly awesome thing were these jeepers - a crowd favorite:

We had our annual dinner and fireworks with my family which is always looked forward to. Sadly this year, it was so overcast and rained a little so the giant slip n slide didn't come out. Maybe we will be able to for the 24th.

We had an awesome dinner where a mean game of "Would You Rather" went on and on and on. It was pretty funny and there was some nasty, gross and funny questions and responses. Aiden, my nearly-7 year-old nephew, loved it and he would ask the silliest questions like: "Would you rather eat a burger full of worms OR nothing at all??" Ummmm, geez that's a tough one. :) Such a cutie.

My husband was where he usually is for a lot of the night: out back entertaining the kiddies. He played ball with Aiden and wrestled both him and Dallin on the tramp. The boys really do love him. It's hard not to, really.

Summer BBQ's always have some corn-on-the-cob, which we always go out and feed to our horses. It's really strange though. These batch of horses (we've had several that were sold and moved on) don't enjoy the cobs like our original older horses did. Those horses would run to you and yank them out of your hand. These horses acted like they were a pile of poo.

Our family tradition is making bombs. Amanda and Gaven are the big bomb makers and the rest of us help and mostly watch. They have it down to a science. Everything matters, down to the bottle that it goes in.

Amanda usually hammers the powder loose in the Pickalo Pete's while Gaven squeezes the powder into the bottle and completes it with firecrackers (if desired) and fuse.

And there are usually casualties:

They also make a few other different types of bombs, but these are out favorite because if you have the right bottle and the right amount of Pete's you get a really awesome bomb like this one (and usually something gets blown up with it):

I wish you could hear how big the BOOM was through the video. It was awesome. And I lost track of the bucket clear up in the sky. It went forever high.

These two dorks never stop playing and running around the entire property. We discovered that Jimmer is a weiner when it comes to fireworks. He doesn't like them at all and peed all over the place. Bacardi has never even cared. He doesn't even look up when one goes off or somethine explodes:

Xannie and Mannie being total dorks. They actually ripped the tape off of each other and they both screamed bloody murder:

My dad got a mountain of awesome fireworks when he passed through Wyoming on his way home from South Dakota. This 24 Karat, for your information, is the coolest firework. I wish I could have a picture of it but it was too dark to try. Super awesome though.

We had Paul's family over to our house for dinner as well. We ate out on our patio and it was a nice evening for it. This picture cracks me up. Paul's face is in shadow and the shadows from my twinkle lights were hitting him just perfect...in case you couldn't tell:

I remembered that I had fireworks from a couple years ago still stashed away and so it seemed a perfect time to light them up since we were all still chilling out when night came. Here are two Budd Brothers putting together our firework show with my old school ghetto fireworks:

Zoyie with her new red hair she's so proud of:

Again, Bacardi couldn't care less about the fireworks but B.J. and Hilary's wiener dog sure hates them. He's so scared that he's holding on to Hilary like a little kid. So funny:

A few days of sleeping in, accomplishing work, laying back and enjoying fireworks, food and family...that's why I love the 4th of July so much!! My favorite holiday...next to Halloween of course ;)

More Crafty Me!

2011-07-07T19:08:00.004-06:00

I am making me another fun project! This has been on my to-do list for two years now and I am finally accomplishing it! Almost done and then I'll show pics of this project and my other one!!

Dad's Day

2011-06-28T09:58:00.002-06:00

Sunday we were able to get together as a fam to celebrate Father's Day. We were a week late since us girls were in St. George but also, my dad now works in South Dakota for the time being and he was home this weekend - so it worked out perfect!

It was such a nice evening once the sun went dow so we spent it out on the porch after we ate our meal. We shared many funny stories and reminisced about some crazy stuff that happened when we were all young. We enjoyed homemade peach icecream (my favorite :) and my dad's favorite cheesecake dessert.

Then he opened his cards and presents. He is listening to my Hoops & Yo Yo card here:

Amber gave him True Grit with a bag full of traveling goodies for his ride back to S.D. The bag was of the Green Lantern and came with a mask - now that he has the mask on, you could never tell it was him, huh??

I'm excited he comes back so soon for the 4th of July. I hope this weekend rocks!! I have lots of stuff planned - yayyyy!!

4-H

2011-06-28T09:40:00.006-06:00

Once upon a time, I used to do 4-H. Four of the five of us did actually. I did it until my freshman year when I could go into rodeo and I left the show biz behind for the fun stuff :) It's been about a gazillion years since then (seems like) and my niece decided that she wanted to give it a go. Imagine how weird it is to get back into something like that...it is very nostalgic for sure. So a lot of my time has been spend riding my horse, trying to train him even further and training Bronsynn on all the stuff she needs to know. She's a first timer and BJ, the horse, will be first timer for this so it was new for both of them.

I was up at 5:30 Saturday morning so I could get over to the padre's house and get the horse all washed up and trimmed and polished. We got over to the arena where Bronsynn, looking fabulous as shown below, went off to take her test:

While she was testing, Amanda and I put the finishing touches on BJ. Here he is getting baby powder put on his white stripe so that it will stand out more:

Isn't he pretty???

This horse did very well for his first pampering. He was shampooed, combed, trimmed, sprayed with shiny stuff, baby powdered, baby oiled, and painted!! Here he is pretty much all done, right before I painted his hooves black. He cleans up nice, eh??

It's a day long event so we set up shade and get the coolers out and we camp out at the trailer unless she's up.

Bronsynn got a red ribbon (2nd place - not second out of the whole class but each person is judged individually) on her two first show events, which was great considering this was a first. She almost got a blue ribbon (1st place) on this event (Western Showmanship), but she broke gait once and so she had to go home with a red. Still very stellar!:

Unfortuanely the speed events didn't go as well. BJ uncharacterstically bucked Bronsynn off during her run so she had a no time, and then that made her miss Scurry, which was a shame because that's a fun race with jumps in it that she rocks at. And Poles was done alright but she was a little nervouse after the Barrels and I couldn't get her to go any faster. She has one more show this August and I think it will go even better....we shall see. But it was a re-learning experience and she did really well. Fun day :)

Beauteeeful Fairies

2011-06-28T09:29:00.006-06:00

I think my ward has some creative people in it! I love the parties I get invited to - this last one being a Fairy Party!! A real nice lady I know LOVES fairies and dragons...which, coincidence!!!, so do I!! When she found out I wanted to do a girl's nursery in fairies, and then my baby boy's nursery in dragons, she told me about her fairy party and I got a cute little invitation not too long after!

A lot of work goes into a little party like this, there are so many fantastic details, such as her table and all the flowers, fairy quotes, china and party boxes.

It was so much fun watching all the different fairies arrive. Our hostess had pretty dragon fly wings and a homemade costume to match. As you can see from the fairies below, there is a Japanese fairy in her kimono, a punk ballerina fairy, a flower fairy (who won the Best Costume prize! - if you look super close you can see all the flowers in her hair and on her wings) and a stylish fairy in turquoise:

The only wings I could think of that I had access to were my sisters black fairy wings from a Halloween costume several years ago. So I borrowed them and dressed my eyes and hair up rock n' roller style, grabbed my studded heels, 'leather' leggings, a skull n cross bones tee, my long black feather earrings and some hardware on my wrist and I went as.....something. I dunno. Naughty fairy, Punk fairy, Evil fairy...whatever works. But I had a lot fun with it. It's been a long time since I have been able to get dressed up - and I love dressing up!!!

My wings are kind of hard to see but the curl up at the tops and also down below. I like them:

When the party got started we all had to sign into a guest book and then pick up the 'program'. Inside was some trivia games, a fairy search game, insturctions to awarding the best costume and making fairy crowns. The fairy search was really hard!! She had figurines like this places all over in her garden and flowers and we had to try to find them. Not. Easy!! I don't know how some people found so many!!! The most obvious ones weren't even on the list to find!!! LIke this knight:

And some were very camouflaged or very VERY tiny and very well hidden!:

After a fine feast of a delicious spread of food, our hostess read a fairy tale.

And when the sun finally went down, it was the perfect setting for chatting and laughing with good friends! I had so much fun sitting with the girls at my table. Jill and I played with some camera apps and we came up with some silly pictures:

You will never see a sexier lady than me:

And me and Teresa (who went as a shimmery little elf with awesome purple eyelashes) looking a little twisted:

See!!! Told you I get to go to some fun stuff 'round these parts. I love it!!

Tuacahn

2011-06-28T08:27:00.006-06:00

I took me a little vacation over Father's Day weekend with the girlz in my family. This trip has been planned for several months so to finally be off having some fun in the sun was super great! My sister Amanda ended up not going so her daughter took her place. It was me, my mom, my sister Amber, and my sisters-in-law Xannie and Sam. Amber has a time share so we were able to chill in St. George at the condo which has this awesome pool that is only two feet away from our door:

We spent an afternoon there after arriving and checking into the condo. Then it was time to get ready so we could grab some grub and head to our first show - The Little Mermaid!!

Tuacahn has some beautiful scenery - I really loved that we were surrounded by these ginormous red cliffs. The weather was hot but it wasn't horrible and there was a breeze so it was so nice there:

Bronsynn is super excited, can you tell?

The Little Mermaid has some super fantastic special effects. That's what made it cool for me because other than that, it had a tendency to be off-the-radar corny and mushy...two things I don't do well with. But we had great seats...fifth row up which ended up being perfect because you could see things on the side stage like this picture here...I was only three seats away from them:

This is one of those awesome special effects, where the water comes down and it looks like they are in the ocean. Here Ariel is going to rescue Eric after he was thrown off the ship!:

Under the Sea was my favorite part - super fun song, fun costumes, fun all around:

And Ursula was pretty cool -as you can tell:

Overall it was pretty good! The ending is totally different and I didn't like it but other people did so it's just personal taste, I guess.

Saturday we had a nice lazy morning followed by a looooong time at the pool :) I loved it! We made lunch and then went out shopping to the outlets to see what we could find...one of which happened to be these totally awesome visors that I know you are all jealous of:

And you just can't go wrong with a look like this:

We found some good stuff and I picked up some goodies from Osh Kosh for Baby to wear and we gorged ourselves on Apple Pie Apples from Rocky Mtn Chocolate Factory and I was super excited to find a place that did Bubble Tea!!! Yummmmmmmm. It was quite an exhausting shopping experience, though, given the heat. I did not appreciate the fact that this was the first time I noticed my feet starting to swell. Boo hoo. But they went down! I just had to get unhot.

We went back to get ready for dinner, which we had up at Tuacahn. It was themed after the diner in Grease. We did some browsing and then got seated. This was what the stage looked like for Grease from up top:

I liked Grease a lot cuz of the fun songs and it was truer to the actual movie/play.

We sat on the second row from the stage and while it was a great view, you had to twist around to see things on the side stages, so that's why I liked seating a bit farther up.

If you like musicals, these two are pretty fun. My favorite is still Wicked, though...which I hear is coming to Utah next year?? Anybody else hear that? Fun vacation to take with the girls - we had a lot of fun and it was nice to get out of the city and enjoy something new.

I Come Prepared

2011-06-08T18:06:00.007-06:00

That's a song title by the way. Probably didn't know that, did ya? It's by Keenan. Love him.

Anyhooslebees, speaking of prepared, I finally got my 72 hour kits! Well, I got them about two months ago...and I'm finally blogging about it. ha ha ha. I decided that instead of piecing my kits together little by little, I went to Emergency Essentials and bought the Trekker II, on sale.

I took important things like toilet paper and matches and put them in sealed plastic baggies to water proof them:

And I have one of these for each of us:

I next need to add to it some clothes, money and some other odds and ends that I think are important. But I'm quite happy I got it done. I am also going to get the 72 Hour MRE food supply but they were out when I was there.

Sew Fun!!

2011-06-08T18:01:00.003-06:00

Me and my tiny inner crafty person are getting in touch again...I've been working on something so fun and it's turning out stinkin' CUTE!! It's almost done - Stay Tuned.........

Hawaiian Luau

2011-06-06T12:36:00.003-06:00

Paul has a high school friend in the military (who flies helicopters and teaches how to fly hellies) and he's home in Utah for a two-week leave. His family threw a big luau party for him and I thought I'd share some fun pics.

This tiki bar was homemade! We got the whole story on the warrior posts and all that but I won't bore you with it:

This little warrior guards the alcohol. It's my favorite:

They have some polynesian neighbors that roasted them a pig with real yams and everything!:

As you can see, Paul and I each got leid ;)

Candy Centerpieces

2011-06-06T12:19:00.007-06:00

So my college friend, Debbie is getting married at the end of this month - Yay for weddings!! My other friend, Amber, threw her a cute little shower at this super yummy place called La Caile Noodle House. Check it out for realz. Anyway - I helped by bringing some decoration to make it a little more shower-esqe and I decided to make these candy centerpieces. Cute and Edible!

Just some cleaned up canning jars tied with ribbon. I got most the candy at Sweet Afton's in Gardner Village. I had long-stemmed suckers, laffy taffy rope, bubble gum and licorice ropes (instead of licorice I wanted pixie sticks...but could I find any pixie sticks??? Noooooo) and in the bottom some grapefuit gummies!

Check out these super cute cookies Amber made for Debbie! She is oodles and oodles smart with the baking and makes super awesome cakes. In fact, she'll be making Debbie's cake for the reception. You can see her stuff here:

And these were our little take home favors, made by Amber:

Super duper cute!!!

"And I-iii Would Walk 500 Miles...."

2011-05-20T10:32:00.004-06:00

How awesome is this song??

So awesome that I didn't understand why I didn't think to add it to my music selection forever ago. I remember listening to this when I was in grade school - outside of my school while we were doing outdoor water sports for some water Olympian thing that our school did. I couldn't get enough of this song. And, Benny & June is such a super cute movie! Haven't seen it since, well, the 90's so I might have to put it on my Netflix.

If A Song Could Get Me You

2011-05-20T10:17:00.001-06:00

I have been waiting for this song to become available on iTunes for FOREVER!! I heard it several years ago and watched a video she'd made for it (which was super cute but I can't find it now).

The artist is Marit Larsen and she's a Norwegian singer, which may explain why it took so darn long for her song to get on iTunes. In fact, I'd forgotten all about it until I was cleaning out some stuff and came across a list of songs I wanted to get and there it was. I decided to try it out again and, WALLA!! Super cute song! This video is also super cute:

Gerrr!!!

2011-05-20T10:07:00.004-06:00

I've been trying to post for a couple days. I could do everything and click on anything and it would work - except for Publish Post. Kind of a precidament, yeah? At first I thought Blogger was having issues and I would just keep checking back. But it turned out, after some web surfing, that it's actually due to the fact that I upgraded to Internet Explorer 9, finally! Apparently IE9, and I think 8, have compatability issues with some websites. Blogger was obviously one of them. So I relied on the brains of other smart people on the web to tell me how to fix it and just in case anyone has the same issue and/or plans to upgrade, click here and scroll down to Method 1: Enable Compatibility View for specific websites in Internet Explorer. Worked just like that. Except now I that I am trying to link websites and bold words, I've noticed the toolbar doesn't work unless it's OUT of compatability mode. Freaking. Perfect. "I love technology......."

My Kind of Night!

2011-05-10T18:38:00.002-06:00

With the weather being so cooperative on Saturday, I just had to get out and fire up the pit! After watching two of Paul's games early that afternoon, I stopped by the grocery store to grab some essentials and I picked up some gourmet chicken dogs, which turned turned out to be absolutely delish! Espcially the Spicy Mango w/ Jalapeno! Yum!

We got cozy 'round this blazing fire - and it was perfect temps for a fire AND no wind!:

He-Man grilled up our game:

And we had a splendid li'l picnic out on the patio! We were able to spend more time together and goof off and just veg. So pleasant!

Our little pup either whined for food (sorry, mister!) or dropped his ball on our feet the entire time so Paul finally tossed him a few - I love that mutt:

Can't wait for more great weather to have more fun outside! Oh, Spring - how I have missed you!!

'Because I'm Going to be a Mommy'

2011-05-10T16:39:00.003-06:00

I have the most amazing husband.

I've rarely seen him this past month, except on Sundays, because his work explodes during this time of year and the poor man is running on fumes. The past two weeks have been especially awful as he has had to work 16, 17, 20+ hours a day. Then he had to take a trip to Phoenix last weekend (more work), flew home on Monday, went straight to work, worked all day every day and ended on Friday afternoon after working nearly 45 hours straight.

I joked with him that he owed me a date - but I was also very serious since we needed some husband/wife time! So, Friday we went out to an early dinner and grubbed down at a pizza joint. Since it was so early, we were the only ones there! About half way through dinner, Paul grabbed his keys and said he'd be right back. He ran to his truck and back and when he sat down I asked him why he had to go to his truck. He said he forgot his wallet. I said "No you didn't". He told me, 'Yes, I did!' And I again I said, 'No, you didn't! He is so cute when he's been caught :) He pulled out a little wrapped box and put it on the table. I was so confused as to why he had gotten me a present. He surprises me randomly quite often so it's not NOT normal, but again I was confused and he told me: 'Because you're going to be a mommy.'

Okay.

I almost cried. In fact, they came..but I held it in! I did not lose it at a pizza factory! I love my man. Seriously.

As I opened it he explained that 'it' is meaningful and I can tell my own story with it.

It's a Trollbead bracelet. I had never heard of it before. You can pick your own beads and charms and so over the years, I can create my own bracelet for my most cherished memories. See? I told you this man is perfect!

Paul picked out this flower clasp to symbolize our marriage - the beginning of our family - because we went to Maui on our honeymoon:

And my first charm symbolizes our baby in the making - Asher - because of his name and because I am doing his room in dragons. This is the Lucky Dragon charm:

He told me all about it and how he'd come across it and later showed me the book with all the other beads and charms that I can add. I seriously love my bracelet. I can't help but smile every time I see it, which is all day, cuz I can't stop playing with it. I love how thoughtful and loving my husband is and I just love love love my life with him!

Yay for Moms!!

2011-05-10T16:06:00.003-06:00

Sunday was such a fun day, starting with the cute kids in Primary who were so much fun and so cute as they made their Mother's Day cards and a 'flower' for their moms. I love it for sure :)

We visited Paul's mom after church for as long as we could (scheduling conflicts) before heading to my mom's house for dinner with the family...well, most of them anyway. My dad was home for a week to be there during the time my mom had surgery and take care of a bunch of stuff, but he had to head back that morning. My older sister was feeling well so she and her two tag-a-longs didn't make it either. And what was with the weather?? Boooo!! It puts such a dark and depressing feel to your day when the house is so dark. I wanted BBQ weather!! In fact...we had planned a BBQ! It wasn't too fun for the person going in and out of the house with an umbrella to check on the meat!

We showered my mom with some nice things: gift certificates for a massage, clothes, plants and as well as new gardening pads, gloves and veggie buckets! The boys gave Grandma a jumbo card from Hoops & YoYo and got a kick out of the song:

Oh and some new painting supplies. My mom used to paint watercolors quite a bit when we were younger so Morgan and Sam thought it'd be nice to give her something to fun to do for herself:

Morgan and Sam cuddly-wuddling:

Gav & Xan:

Yes, folks, I am married to this face right here:

Love it!!!

Simple Salad

2011-05-10T15:57:00.002-06:00

Mmmm! Easy peasy!!

Good As New...Almost!

2011-05-04T08:43:00.003-06:00

Yesterday my mom went to surgery to have a hole in her heart repaired. I can't remember what the procedure was called but it went smoothly and so far my mom isn't in any pain and goes home this morning! Yay! It wasn't anything major like open-heart surgery, which a lot of doctors use to fix this, I guess. They went up through her femoral artery using a catheter and plugged the hole in her heart using an umbrella shaped device. The heart will now grow over the device and close like it should have. Did you know that it's very common for people to have holes in their hearts? That at birth, sometimes that hole just doesn't close up. And it's genetic, this thing of my mom's. Yay for us.

My mom would have been able to watch the entire procedue and see the inside of her own heart! Why didn't she? She fell asleep!! She was so mad, ha ha. The doctor, Dr. Sorensen at the Heart and Lung Center at Murray IHC, does these ALL THE TIME. In fact, he's the most sought after doctor for this procedure (so if you know anyone....he's really really good). In surgery, they are better able to see the hole and they had to go bigger in the 'plug' to close up the hole, which was a little bigger than a 50 cent piece. Wow!! He said he hadn't seen a hole that big in a really long time. The device only goes up to 35 mm and my mom's was a 30!

My mom is really excited to be on the mend now. The way this hole had affected her for nearly 28 years (yes folks, that's how old I am and yes, it started after she had me) has something to do about the lack of oxygen to her brain and the way the blood was pumped. She apparently had migraines she didn't know of AND, most scary, it caused her several mini-strokes. She always thought that she was just sick and that it took her extra long to get back to normal (clear head, balance, equilibrium, etc), but I guess those really bad times were mini strokes and this last one was her biggest of all...which is what prompted her to see an Ears, Nose, Throat specialist, who in turn were able to determine that it was one of four things and by seeing other specialists, this was discovered and now she is looking forward to having her head & health back. As we all are :)

My New Hardware :)

2011-04-28T12:54:00.002-06:00

Yesterday I took my niece to her first 4-H meeting, which was at the Riverton Arena right across the street from my good high school friend, Rachelle. I called that girl up to say 'Surprise! Guess where I am?' and she stopped by the arena on her way to dinner to give me a surprise of her own!:

She just started up her own business in stamped jewelry. Click here to access her Facebook page for Cherry Blvd. Look at how stinkin' cute this is!! It says 'Mommie's Little Angel' & 'Asher'. I la - la - laaaaaave it!!!

Make Your Own Almond Milk!

2011-04-27T13:37:00.008-06:00

I love Almond Milk.

Besides the fact that Almond Milk is silky and nummy, I very strongly believe the cow's milk, especially the processed homogenized, pasteurized, hormone-filled milk that fills America's refrigerators, is incredibly dentrimental and hazardous to our health. I have witnessed it several times and done my research and there is nothing 'healthy' about store-bought milk contrary to what the Milk ads constantly throw in your face. That's all propaganda, folks, intent on one thing: sales.

But I digress. Let's move on to the recipe. One of the benefits of making your own almond milk is that it's really very simple, you know exactly what's going in it, and as the words organic and 100% natural become more of a trend, you need to be aware of companies who falsely label their products (yes, it happens) to bring you these items filled with things that are anything but organic and natural so that they can make a quick buck.

Almond Milk

4-5 cups spring or filtered water

1 cup almonds, soaked overnight

1 tsp vanilla extract (for flavor)

a few dates or 1/4 cup Agave, for sweetness

*you don't have to add the dates or the agave. Also, there have been times when I have just sprinkled in a small amount of Stevia and Cinnamon and shook it up into the milk later. Makes it super sweet ;)

** you will also need a fine strainer or sieve, a large-ish bowl, and a glass container to store your milk.

This recipe is actually very quick and simple once your almonds have had a good soak. Takes me about ten mintues is all :)

This is what soaked almonds look like. See how plump they are?

Look at the difference between soaked almonds and regular almonds (right):

I always throw a few extra nuts into the soak because I can't resist nibbling on them when I open the refrigerator. Soaked almonds are actually very good for you!

Take your cup of soaked almonds and throw them in a blender or food processor along with all the other ingredients. Blend until smooth. I don't have a stellar blender and so I use my food processor. However, my food processor will leak a lot of liquids so I usually start out with all the ingredients and only 1 cup of water until everything is chopped to fine bits and then I gradually add a cup at time and then 'pulse' for a few seconds to blend it all together.

It should look like this when your done:

Doesn't that frothy goodness make you want to go make some right now?

Then you need to take a fine sieve or strainer and a large bowl to strain the milk:

Pour your milk into the strainer over your bowl:

And then you will end up with 'almond meal'. I like to press down on the meal to extract as much water as possible and then I save the almond meal to go on top of salads or yogurt.

Then pour your the milk from the bowl into a glass container that you can store your milk in. It will keep for about 5 to 6 days and is delicious over oatmeal, buckwheat cereal and the likes:

See? Easy-peasy! Now go make some of your own and be proud of how 'natural' you can be :)

Bacardi's Sleep-Over

2011-04-19T16:48:00.005-06:00

Bacardi had a 'sleep-over' this weekend. My friend from college was going on a weekend get-away. She and her fiance bought a house up the street from us and it was a pefect solution to have Toby stay here. My obnoxious dog drove poor Toby crazy. It took Bacardi a day and a half to figure out that he didn't have to follow Toby everywhere and act crazy 24/7. While having Toby over proved that I never want more than one dog, it was also nice that Bacardi had a playmate and someone to keep him preoccupied. It was a rainy day Sunday so they wrestled inside for hours on end, then stopped to sleep, then picked right back up again:

Happy 40th

2011-04-18T13:16:00.004-06:00

Doesn't my hubby looks so sexy in my huge gold GIRLIE glasses?? :)

Kenny turned 40 last week and we all celebrated at the Padre's house.

Kenny is a comedian in our family, we love him tonz!!

I'm sure Bronsynn loves this pic...ha ha ha ha!!!:

Gaven has a new puppy - Jimmer is an Old English Bulldog and he's six weeks old here. He is SO STINKIN' CUTE. At first, he didn't know what to do when the big dog came around. But Bacardi is good with little dogs and Jimmer soon found that it was pretty fun when they played. But he's a little too small for Bacardi so he easily loses interest in playing with Jimmer and Jimmer doesn't like that:

And then we sang!!! In this video I used the word conjugating to tell everyone we were ready to sing. My sister thought I was using the word consumating and I was really thinking of the word congregating. I told her to learn her dictionary - and then I remembered the word I was trying to say...seems like I am the one who needs to learn her dictionary!

Where She Went

2011-04-15T11:06:00.004-06:00

Eeeeeek!!! The sequel to If I Stay!! It was released on Wednesday - FINALLY!! I re-read If I Stay on Tuesday, bought the new release on Wednesday and read it that day. I loved it!! Reading from Adam's perspective was quite a ride, since he is heart-broken and bitter and all that. What a rocker-stud though. :) Great book!

The Book Thief

2011-03-30T10:46:00.002-06:00

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak is, in a word, brilliant. I just wrote that and then realized it's also on the front cover of my copy. I guess it must be true then.

Until I bought my copy, I thought this book might be about some guy who's a thief for a living or what not. Not so at all. This book is a story told by Death and his story is about the story of a little German girl named Liesel Meminger during World War II.

The Book Thief does not center around the Jews in concentration camps or soldiers in War, but of course they are mentioned and are important to the story because of certain characters. The focus is on this little girl and how she came to be where she was & how she learned the power of words.

The writing is different than anything else I have ever read and I loved every minute of it. I loved the peculiarness and the choice of words and the way this story was told. It's the best fictional book based around true events that I ever remember reading and it's at the top of my list for the best books that I've ever read. I find it a real treat to find books that are written by talented authors who have a serious gift with words and telling stories. It's refreshing from the hundreds of authors who have an idea like everyone else's and somehow get published for works that are less than stellar.

You should read this. It's super duper worth the time.

It's A Boy!!

2011-03-24T20:49:00.003-06:00

Many of you already know, but here is my official announcement. It #1 has a penis:

Shocked a little?? Yes. I'd always wanted a boy first...but then my mind was completely and totally centered around all things girl the entire pregnancy - actually, it was longer than that. I kept finding all these cute decals that I was going to put in 'her' room and I had all these fantastic, chicy outfits all picked out for pictures and the blessing...all things that will have to go on hold. I didn't know what to think when I saw that picture pop up on the screen! It was a really weird feeling for some dumb reason. Before the ultrasound, everytime I had tried to think of boy names I liked or how I would decorate the room, my mind went completely blank. So I would go right back to picking out the letters that would go on the wall above the crib and the little bee's and flowers and fairies.

In hindsight, I remember one of those times spent browsing the web for such fancy girl things and a brief feeling came to me that it was going to be a boy. It was so brief, however, and my mind was still stuck in fairy fairy land that I didn't pay much attention to it and forgot all about it. Out loud I would say: It'll be what it'll be. And inside I would say: But most likely it will be a girl. Oh, Maghann....ha ha ha. You silly girl.

Anyhooslebees, I love this picture alot:

Here's his footie:

And this, ladies and gents, is Asher Madsen Budd, no longer It#1:

I spent three hours browsing the web for a name, ended up hating them all, brainstormed with my hubbie and dwelled on a name that we had previously liked, tweaked it a little and voi la!!! I was seriously worried that I wouldn't find a name that I would love my boy to have. But now It is a He and He is a Asher and I even have room ideas and the PERFECT picture for it, thanks to my friend's fabulous eye, and I am five months and feeling him kick and get stronger every day and this is beginning to be seriously cool :)

Get On, Li'l Pony

2011-03-24T20:25:00.004-06:00

I don't have very many days ahead of me left where I can ride until after my baby comes, so on this rare day of no rain and minimal wind, Bronsynn, Fajjjer and I headed out to the desert with the ponies. My dad recently sold his gelding and so we are down to only two horses that were home and able to go out to the desert. We had to borrow a little pokey pony of my dad's friend that goes with us. In the goodness of my heart I rode the little midget so that Bronsynn could be on B.J. who she is most comfortable on. Not my most favorite ride. The things I do for that child.

This is us when we arrived at 'The Kitchen' for the best hotdogs in the world. I don't touch hotdogs anymore but I won't pass one up when I am the mountain. I brought sauerkraut and my dad put a can of chili on the fire and we had some damn fine dogs. Yum. This is the kitchen table with our game:

This is me and my doggie. I am not above physically forcing my dog to pose with me. He loves it on the inside:

Bronsynn atop the horse I trained...lucky for her:

The view from where we sat...prettier in person:

The ride back to the trailer was a thousand years. I didn't expect to feel any different when riding a horse while pregnant. I never get sore - not even when I got back on a horse after being away at college for two years. I was most apalled to find out that not only was I sore, I was sore in places that you don't realize exist. My stomach hurt, my back throbbed and I couldn't cross my legs for days. W.T.H. One of many things to cause me distress about this sitch-iation.

Also, the drive home took a thousand years. An extremely slow moving train decided to stop on the tracks for ohhhhh about 40 minutes. There is no other road to get home. yay. On the plus side I put my camera to use.....

...and had a photo shoot with myself. Your welcome for my artistic abilities.

I also included Bronsynn:

And my pops. He takes a really good pic:

Finally back on the road I turned around after some time and found this:

Oh a close up you say?? Why, of course!!

She'll be getting tagged on Facebook :)

Celebration....Of Me!!

2011-03-24T19:44:00.003-06:00

Okay so many know that I have the #1 husband in the world. It's not bragging if it's true. ;)

I woke up on my birthday, having forgotten that it was my birthday, to the smell of sizzling bacon, eggs and fluffy waffles. Yes you can smell fluffly. Actually, my husband woke me up with a kiss and I said "why does it smell like bacon?" It's because he's so stinkin' awesome he woke up extra early and made me breakfast! We walked downstairs and I saw this:

My cute husband gifted me back with a Happy 2nd Birthday ballooon and the 8 balloon - for 28, just like I accidentally did for him three weeks before.

He is seriously so great and cute I love him to pieces. I was very much looking forward to my day because I had the entire office to myself at work so I didn't have to deal with ANYONE!!, but mostly I wanted that part over because Paul was taking me to Mazza that night, a Middle-Eastern restaurant that I have really wanted to try. It was delicious food and I know it would have been even better if I wasn't upchucking and trying to get my stomach to stop. hurting. already. Geerrr!! We had a good laugh at the fact that we were the only youngsters in there - we must have not been on the list to receive the memo that it was Senior Night. It wasn't really but it may as well have been because everywhere we looked were white-haired people.

Anyway....back home I was looking forward to relaxation! And I got it. We also got a visit from Paul and Teresa, in which we shared many good laughs as always. She brought me some fantastic presents that I must share. She knew of this really awesome website called Deviant Art, where there are thousands of different pieces of art done by anyone and everyone. There is so many that I couldn't possibly go through them all! She wanted me to pick something out for myself, and I kept looking for fairy pictures because 1) I really love fairy/pixie creatures and 2) I was going to put them in my babies room if I ended up having a girl because that is what I am going to do my girls room in. I think the pictures are so pretty:

Now....my baby had to go and turn into a boy so I will find another place to put these pictures and put my fairy room on hold for awhile :)

My second present:

So awesome!! I busted up laughing when I opened this up. Such humor, that gal. This book is full of fun recipes with clever titles like Edward's Sparkle Cake, Chopped to Bits Salad, Bloody Joes, Sliced-Open Face Grilled Panini w/ Pears, & Fang-Banger Ribs! The first on my list to make is the Passion Pudding and the Vulgar Bulgar Salad and that pear panini!! Yum!!!

Speaking of recipes, my mother-in-law bought me a membership to Barnes & Noble with a gift card for my birthday!!! Yay!! I had my eye on this Simple Salads book that has the most delicious looking salads so I went and used my gift card on that and enjoyed it at a lower cost :)

And of course I had to shake my booty as I was serenaded the way only Madsen's can do:

Spells

2011-03-18T11:03:00.005-06:00

Yay!!! I just finished Spells by Aprilynne Pike. Do you remember Wings? Well this sequel is really good. Aprilynne is one of the better YA writers, in my opinion. After I read Wings I decided to wait until Spells was released in paperback to buy it and read it. But then time passed and I think I lost my desire to read it. But my mom picked it up from the library because she really wanted to finish it and so of course, I stole it and I'm glad I did.

'Member how very sick I am of all the YA books that have these impossible love triangles?? I still am very sick of them but this one does have a pretty decent triangle. Usually I can easily pick the one I'm rooting for. Not so much this time. Both David and Tamani are swoon-worthy hotties and neither seem to have their bad points. Oh what to do? What to do?

I thought this was going to be a trilogy but there will be four books and lucky for me I don't have to wait long for number 3, Illusions, to get released this May! Yay! Also getting released this next month....Where She Went, the sequel to If I Stay. CAN'T. WAIT.

Playin' In My Pod

2011-03-16T13:09:00.007-06:00

I love these songs. Lykke Li (a swedish indie singer) has several really contagious songs and these two are my favorite. Some of her songs are way out there (and videos, too). She is very creative though. After 'discovering' her, I was browsing some music and realized that she sings that really annoying song Possibilty on the New Moon soundtrack - you know that song that plays while poor picked-on Bella zones out zombie-style in front of her window while the seasons change? It has it's pretty parts but the pretty parts aren't worth me wading through the rest of it.

Anyhooslebees, I love these songs. Can't get enough!

Homemade Potstickers

2011-03-16T09:30:00.004-06:00

I made these last night! I wasn't about to take pictures and the write her recipe down when she already does it so magnificently...I could never hope to compare! And her picture is so pretty because she's a pro. But I like it a lot. As a warning, the preparation isn't that bad but combining prep, with the small amount of cook time plus the stuffing and crimping of the potsticker...it can take a bit of time. It did for me since I am a virgin potsticker maker (until last night he he he). The only thing I would change is the amount of fresh ginger. It calls for 1 Tablespoon and I didn't even do close to that much and the ginger was still very strong and overpowered other flavors in my opinion. It was super fun though! My husband enjoyed them....at 11 o'clock at night :)

The Maze Runner

2011-03-15T10:50:00.003-06:00

I thought I blogged about this book, too, but I must have some serious pregnant brain going on. Boo hoo.

Okay, so this book happens to be yet another trilogy. Which would be fantastic if it was any good. It starts out really good, capturing your attention, making you think, etc. But, seriously, it spends way too much time on things that nobody cares about, frustrates you entirely the entire time and then at the end, everything just happens really fast, too fast, and when it's all said and done you think: " What was the point of any of that?" Oh it's a fantastic idea for a story line but it needed a better reason behind it all.

The jist: Teenage boys one day find themselves in The Maze, their memories completely wiped out. They are added one by one and all have a role in keeping order in their little community while The Runners go out everyday, facing dangers and trying to find a way out of The Maze so they can all find The Creators and kill em for what they've done.

I usually like to finish trilogies, but I am pretty sure this one is going on the burner. Most of the Best Book Club Ever had a similar feeling. Apparently there is a movie being made from it, directed by Catherine Hardwicke (Twilight, Lords of Dogtown) and I have to wonder if it will be any good at all for two reasons: The book (if they follow it, it will most likely bomb) and the director (she's good, but she blew Twilight hardcore and I have a hard time disassociating her with that)

Catherine has also directed Red Riding Hood, which hopefully won't be lame. If it is I will probably steer clear of anything she ever directs. Possibly even One For the Money: which is a shame because I love those books and Katherine Heigl is set to play Stephanie Plum.

The Thirteenth Tale

2011-03-15T10:42:00.003-06:00

I really thought I already blogged about this book. I checked and I can't find it anywhere on my blog so I guess I didn't. Weird.

This book is pretty dang good. It's full of twists and turns and really makes you put your thinking cap on when you are trying to figure out how it all ends. It's written so well, too. It's refreshing to read a book written so well cuz I feel that so many books I read have potential to be great and the writing makes it blow. When reading this book you almost feel like you're in some quaint little village, talking proper English in the days before electricity. :) And she has an amazing way of painting a picture. I love it.

It's about a famous author who tracks down this girl to write her biography. Doesn't sound too interesting. But it is! You will get ensared from the very beginning :)

It's My Fault

2011-03-08T11:36:00.002-07:00

I'm so sorry for the snow dump we had yesterday!! You see...I am CRAAAAVING the sun and warmth and the smell of fresh cut grass and planting soil - basically I have Spring Fever. Over the weekend, I bought me some super duper cute flippie floppies, some shorts and some springy lookin' shirts. I should have known Mother Nature would have laughed evilly and then bashed my hopes of seeing permanent warmer temps and saying goodbye to pasty white legs. What does a girl have to do around here to get a little bit of Vitamin D??!!!! Hellooooo????

Re-Motivation

2011-02-24T15:30:00.004-07:00

I am getting re-motivated...on my food storage :) I need to get my butt back in gear and put the finishing touches on my 3 month supply recipes and charts. But I've also decided to really focus on finally getting my 72-hour kits done as well as work harder on my water supply. I have ideas floating around my head such as going to the DI for packs, hitting up the dollar stores, and putting together a binder of all instructions and how-to's that I might need during disaster (since this is typically stuff I wouldn't do on a day-to-day basis). Learning how to make bread from scratch - as in grind your own wheat scratch - is still something I have yet to accomplish. I have tonz of organizing I have to get done in the next few months and I've been brainstorming on where to put everything I have (both food storage related and non) and things I still need to acquire. I start feeling pretty overwhelmed with it all BUT!! never fear....I like lists and I am going to make me a MOTHER list and I will get things accomplished one tiny little step at a time. GO ME!!

Go to Safely Gathered In and click on resources at the top for some free printouts. Click on Emergency Preparedness for lists for car kits (done!!) and 72-hour kits. I even gathered supplies for a cardboard oven (so proud of myself!!). Here are some other websites I browsed today:

Safely Gathered In: Water Series

Provident Living: Drinking Water

FEMA: Water Guidlines

EPA