Golden Birthday

I turned 24 on the 24th this year. It was SO exciting...not really, but it was a great day. This past weekend we went to SLC for Makenna's baby shower, not gonna lie, made me a pit pregnant hungry. Notice, I'm not baby hungry, I just like being pregnant. Call me crazy. As always it's great to see family, but holy cow, Miles' schedule was all sorts of thrown off. I swear he's not a demon child usually!! Why won't he perform when we tell him to?? :) For my birthday we got me a sewing machine so I can become a semi-proficient seamstress and make all these cool projects I keep seeing out there. We'll see how that goes. My patience level for perfection and sewing has a short fuse. The Garners of course made me feel special, and when we got back, the Christensen's even had us over for a little birthday shin-dig also. Such good friends. Miles gave me the best birthday present though. He slept in till 9 and then also took a 3 hour nap!! AND a flower finally bloomed on our flower plants. There are some flowers that I planted in a clear vase because I thought it would be cool to watch the roots grow all over. I was right, it is cool. Funny thing, I checked it today and there are some mushrooms growing in it! I always try to post a caption above a specific picture, but it never works, so I'm just going to post all the pictures and you can figure it out for yourselves. The on picture of Miles and his grandma Linda cracks me up! He was actually cuddling with her, but it looks like he's a giant child and is trampling her or something!

Come to my Garden

I don't think you can fully appreciate beautiful weather until you live in Eastern Idaho. It's finally nice outside and we're taking TOTAL advantage of it. Another advantage of the great weather is being able to finally plant in our garden. So now we've got peas, onions and potatoes. I hope they do well!! Cross your fingers! We also went and planted a bunch of flowers today. It feels delicious being outside.




Side note: For those of you with kids Miles' age, here's an idea for an activity. We just put water in an ice cube tray and then he helps me put drops of food coloring in each one. He thinks it's pretty neat to watch the colors change. Then we let it freeze and he chooses a color of ice cube to put in his drink. :)

Another side note: Our mother's finally got their mother's day gifts, so I thought I'd show you what I made. They are fizzing bath salts and I tried some of the leftovers, and I think they worked pretty well for being homemade. It was pretty easy too! If you want the recipe let me know, I got it off of Martha Stewart.

Father's and Son's

Richie is so cool. He saw in the ward bulletin that Father's and Son's would be this weekend. I didn't even give it a thought. "Miles is way too little" I said to myself. But Richie's eyes lit up and he started making plans. We decided it wouldn't be best to stay overnight since the weather can get nasty fast here and it would be a lot of work for Richie to set up the tent etc etc all while trying to keep an eye on Mr. Miles. But they went to the cook-out, the hike and all the other activities. They both came home tired. I was so wanting a little girl time, but seeing as all other girls I knew around here would be with their husbands and kids, I went to the gym and then had a nice bath and read. Good times. It makes me excited for the days when we have more kids and when the boys go off to Father's and Son's, us girls will do all sorts of girly things. You know what I'm talking about. Here's a few pictures Richie took. That mountain is the one the climbed!

Little Man

Miles got his very first hair cut today! My friend Angie offered to show me how to do it, since I was too nervous to just chop into it. You may not see a big difference in the before and after pictures because his hair is so blonde, but trust me he had a mullet/rat tail/ mowhawk goin on. It was kind of unexpectedly emotional for me! My little boy is growing up very fast, and he has the hair cut to prove it! Maybe we should call him "Big Hair Cut" from now on. (Andy Bernard)
Before:



After:

What a Productive Weekend!

I was at the DI finding a few things and ran into an old, blue, Samsonite suitcase. I'm not sure why, but I have this fetish with old suitcases and have been wanting some for Miles' room. I went back and forth, but when I saw the plastic balls, I knew the suitcase would be the perfect house for them. And since Richie wasn't there to tell me "no", I bought them both. :) Miles thinks is great. My plan is to buy 2 or so more colorful old suitcases and put blocks and tinker toys in there.

Richie got all "Handy Manny" on me this week and organized our storage unit by bending some rebar to hang our bikes on, and then building some shelves with some left over wood! Since we had already borrowed the saw from a neighbor, I had him build me a shelf I saw on "Knock Off Wood" (Amazing website) from an old pallet! Totally free, and turns out really rustic and cool looking. It will go in our bedroom probably above our self-proclaimed reading nook, and I'm debating painting or staining it.





I was lazy and ill-prepared and didn't get the Mother's Day gifts in the mail till it was too late to make it to them on time. So later, I'll post the neat idea I found for their gift, so as to not spoil the surprise, and the cafe rio salad recipe. yum!!

Oh what a coat of paint can do!

We "inherited" some furniture recently (thank you Dees) and we were told we could sell it at an upcoming garage sale or keep it. We opted to keep the lamp base and end table. I figured with a little TLC, they could be pretty neat-o. I wish I would have taken before pictures, but the lamp base was just a dark wood with gold trim, same with the end table. Kind of beat up and really dated. They had gotten them at the DI for super cheap. No need to go into much detail, I just primed them both and then painted and stained or sanded to make it look a little more distressed. I found the lamp shade at the DI for $2 and decided to get creative with it. Not so sure I like it, but hey, for only 2 bucks, I can afford to not like it for now. Either way, it is sure a fun thing for me to do.





Tonight I made Cafe Rio Salad! Yummm. I was doubly excited to make it this time around because I had my very own cilantro from these little beauties, grown right here in our windowsill. It could just be my pride, but man, did that cilantro taste good!!


And, Miles ate a half of a crayon the other day. It was blue, and apparently delicious.

No Creative Title Ideas

Maybe I'm compulsive this way, but I like every post to have a specific theme. It seems like lately, all my posts have been a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and I guess I'll just have to cope. In the mean time, you don't get any witty post titles full of clever puns...

A favorite thing that I did this week was make myself a little flower garden. Some flowers that we started were getting too big for their start box, so I took some old ice cream and yogurt containers and old cans, watered down some glue, painted it on the containers, and then stuck some paper around them. So easy, but I'm totally smitten. I placed them on our enormous windowsill and feel like I helped beautify a teeny-tiny corner of the world.



Older than Miles age kids would get this more, but Miles still got a kick out of it. I did it with my 1st graders when I was student teaching to help them with their spelling words in a more tactile way. Just sprinkle some salt, sand, corn meal, anything grainy on a pan, and let them go to town! I tried tracing letters with Miles, but he was more interested in just playing with it. Totally fine. But it's way more fun if you can get it out of the pan and all over the floor right?




We took Miles to a play place thing in Rexburg on Friday night. Don't let this picture fool you, he got to really like it after the first time through. It was something new, and that is always a nice feeling.



I swear I didn't put him up to this. I walked in, and there he was, scrubbing our toilets. "Cinderelly! Cinderelly!" He thought it was quite entertaining, and hey, I can't complain. Ok, I need some suggestions. When he was about 11 months, he went through a short-lived hitting phase. It subsided gradually, but our sweet little boy has been taken captive by a controlling, demanding, parrot of a 15 month old. ??? He just picked up "No!" except it sounds like "Mo! MOMOMOMOMOMO MO!" While furrowing his brow and shaking his finger at us. He also likes to hit us with golf balls and kick us in the tummy while changing his diaper. He's very determined and gets this certain look on his face like "I'm going to get what I want. Go ahead, try and stop me." How do you deal with this???