Last week

Last Saturday was the first meeting of our book club. It was fun! Only two of us finished the book. At my suggestion, we read Some Sing, Some Cry by Ntozake Shange and Ifa Bayeza. It was a tough book! I read the book first and then started listening to the book on CD. Listening was so much better than reading. I suppose there is a chance that listening was easier to follow simply because I had already read it. At any rate, it was hard but I'm glad I read it. I'm only about half done listening to it but I want to finish for sure. It'll keep me company on the tread mill.
On Monday we took Crystal to Fetal Foto. My Mom went in on the cost with us. I think it's so magical to see that baby's face and recognize it on the day of it's birth. Every mom should do it at least once. And so we got to see our sweet baby Nash. Isn't he cute? Just a couple more months till we get down to the baby snuggling!

That morning Jaxon came to me and said, very matter of factly, "What I want to know is why there is a hard thing by my tooth." A quick look showed that his first new tooth is coming in behind his still very firmly attached baby teeth. ugh! A visit to the dentist is in his near future.

Someone give that kid some Blistex, uh?
On Tuesday I woke up after a long night of dreaming about Crystal, Kenzie, Athena and Dexter traveling repeatedly through an x-ray machine. All night long. It was kind of a combination of a revolving door and the full body xray they do at the airport. ugh! I'm sure it was inspired by Crystal's fetal foto experience, Kenzie's needing a CT scan for her increasingly frequent migraines and Athena and Dexter being sick. A virus for Dexter, pneumonia for Athena. Geez! It's exhausting loving so many kids and grandkids! lol
I shook the xray dreams by working in the craft room all day. I started making the sheets that will become the signatures in a scrapbook of our NC trip.

I love this kind of pile of papers. The kind that comes in from the mailbox? Not so much.

My mom came for a visit on Friday and we checked out an antique store in Sandy. Ever since I started making the ROD journals I've been dying to go to some antique stores and search for vintage papers. I found some! Vintage Valentines which will be very handy for journaling about mine and Roger's little Valentine getaway that I've been planning this week.

Yesterday we ran our Bountiful Basket site early in the morning and then took the kids to a model train show. It was about 40% train displays and 60% sales pitches. It kind of annoys me to pay admission to be marketed to.
But we did enjoy the displays. The Lego display was the most popular by far. But we liked them all. I thought the details in the backgrounds were more fascinating than the trains themselves. But Jaxon loved watching the trains go round and round.

And we did make purchases. Roger didn't need to be convinced to buy these helicopters for the kids. Not at all.

A little lunch at Chili's

and then a little shopping for Superbowl.
Then it was home to collapse on the couch. The day is LONG when it begins at 4am.
Just hanging out at home today. I'll work on the NC book while I wait patiently for the Superbowl to end and The Voice to begin! I might take in a commercial or two and too many appetizers during the game. But other than that, bring on Adam and Blake!

Some of last week in pictures.

I thought I'd snap a picture a day and do these posts once a week. But I struggle. Some days I'm busy and forget, other days there isn't anything that seems picture worthy.
But here are a couple of highlights.
It finally snowed! This has been the most unwinterlike winter that I can ever remember. But it did finally snow. Not a lot. Just enough to try out the boots and gloves, throw a few snowballs and build a tiny snowman.

I went to visit Heather at her new house. Which, BTW, is completely unpacked and organized even though they just moved in 3 weeks before my visit. Because "Team Heather and David" is a whirling dervish of energy.

 And I went with Crystal to her prenatal appointment, where we got to have a peek at baby Nash just because Crystal asked. lol Her doctor is such a softie!

Still a boy. hee! Two more months till new baby head sniffing begins again!

Last Week in Pictures

Saturday I spent most of the day helping Emily put together the pages for her journal and binding them into the cover. She wasted no time beginning the journaling of super secret tween type things so I can't share the pages here.

While we sewed, Jaxon spent hours playing with the waffle blocks that are 20 years older than he is. he loves them! He made an impressive "animal train" at one point.

Sunday was family dinner.
Time for a new picture of the baby boys. Dexter is trying hard to catch up with Oliver now that his "failure to thrive" issue has been corrected. And he just might do it soon! Look at that beautiful round head!
Oliver was masked up for a superhero party that they went to before family dinner. And not too happy about picture taking. 

Monday I spent some time assembling the pages for my journal and binding them into the cover.
I'm loving it! And, like Emily, I couldn't wait to get started using it. I'll share the pages later when they're full of happy faces and memories.

Wednesday I sent the kids back to school after their 4 day weekend and then I had a little thrift store me time. yay! I have a plan for decoration the mantle and I needed a pot just like the one on the left below. I also found the one on the right which is all wrong for this project but....well, you see my dilemma, right?

So I got them both. :)
Thursday I went with Jaxon's class on a field trip to the firestation across the street from his school.
Nothing like 25 kindergartners to liven up a firestation. They were all most excited about seeing the firemen's pole. It was a fun field trip. They were full of energy and enthusiasm. And they do and impressive Stop! Drop! (cover your face with your hands) and Roll!

Thursday was also Crystal's 25th birthday. Roger and I took her out to dinner. Blue Iguana again! lol Can't get enough of that place, but I swear it was her choice! Who am I to argue?!?!

I'm not a huge fan of knick knacks myself, but Crystal likes them. We gave her this Willow Tree figurine (The Guardian). I knew the minute I saw it that it was perfect for her and the journey she's on right now as the guardian of our sweet Nash.

The last week in pictures

Heather didn't want me to make a quilt for Oliver. Maybe it has something to do with taking 3 years to finish Maveryk's? Anyway, I made a diaper bag instead. Not the traditional luggage type bag though. It's a sling bag in fabrics to match Oliver's nursery theme.

That giraffe fabric is sooooo soft and snuggly. There's enough left to make something else for his nursery soon.
Kenzie was sick all day on Saturday, she thought it was food poisoning, and had to leave Sunday morning to go back to school. :(

Speaking of school, Jaxon had lots of catching up to do after his pink eye induced 4 day weekend. I love how serious he is when he's focused on his homework.

On Tuesday I got hit by the plague. I guess Kenzie didn't have food poisoning after all. :P I spent the next 36 hours mostly in this position.

(Note to self: You should really get the mantle redecorated now that you took Christmas down.)
The good news is, I got a lot of reading done in my book club book, Some Sing, Some Cry by Ntozake Shange and Ifa Bayeza. Which was my pick for book club and is admittedly difficult to read. I hope I haven't sabotaged book club before it even got off the ground. Even though it's a hard read, I'm enjoying it.
When I was feeling better and solid food seemed wise again I made a run to the craft store. I thought I might treat myself to lunch at Rumbi Island Grill. I love their fish tacos. But there's a Jimmy John's right next door to Rumbi, and I had heard it's good so I stopped there for a sandwich instead.

I was not impressed. Now I feel ripped off for my fish tacos. 
I went to lunch with friends on Thursday and Friday but forgot to take pics. You'll have to trust me, it was lovely.
 

This and That

Long time, no blog. Again.
It doesn't look like things will slow down anytime soon so I might as well get some stuff down here while I have the chance.
Let's see...
I mentioned a while ago that I was going to try to grow a square foot garden inside of a dog run to keep the deer out. Unfortunately, that plan never got beyond this...

Turns out that the best place to have a garden in our yard won't pass the HOA's approval unless we install a vinyl fence around our yard. Which is A) not something we want to do. And B) would make the dog run unnecessary anyway. So we sold the dog run for just what we spent on it and decided to join the local community garden instead. We just got things planted today. So delayed because of this late Spring we're caught up in. We also planted just a small box in the backyard mostly for salad greens, snacking tomatoes and fun stuff for Jaxon to experiment with. Hopefully these solutions will work out.

The newest grand sons are well under way.

Can't wait to meet them this fall.

Last weekend we participated in the Great Strides National Walk Event for Cystic Fibrosis.
It was a perfectly gorgeous day sandwiched right in the middle of days and days of rain. Great timing!

The walk took place in downtown Salt Lake City which is becoming a place that I really enjoy exploring after all these years. Go figure. We were walking at a pretty brisk pace that day so I didn't get a chance to snap many pictures (With my new Mother's Day camera! Did ya notice the improvement in pics lately?) but here's just a taste of the beautiful weather we were treated to.

 At the end of the 5K walk there were some guys handing beautiful red roses to all the ladies.

There was a card attached that explained that children with CF sometimes call their condition "Sixty Five Roses" because it's easier for them to say. So sweet. We were happy to help support the event.

Roger and I had a date night last week. We saw The Hasty Heart at Hale Centre Theater. Great show! I seem to be getting mushy in my old age because this one had me crying at the end too. I think this is the second one in a row to reduce me to tears. Oy!
Before the play we had dinner at a favorite restaurant downtown. The Blue Iguana. Yum!
Right outside the restaurant, beside Capitol Theater, there is a new art installation. I'm not sure I really "get it" but it's interesting anyway. Roger said he had read about it in the paper recently and I was able to track down the article online. The piece is titled "Sway'd".

Huh. You never know what you'll see downtown. LOL
Speaking of that...a few days later we were downtown again and I noticed this building as we were walking a different route back to the car.

Hmmm...I wonder what they manufacture there? Donkeys?

We've had a couple of small projects going around the house.
When I had my very first house built 17 years ago, I had this idea to make a curtain rod for the master bedroom out of a tree branch. I'm not sure why it never happened. But Crystal recently moved into her own place and she was looking for curtain rod ideas. While looking for some ideas for her I was reminded of the tree branch idea and I decided to go for it. So we found some branches at Crystal's new place and brought them home. After some trimming and planning we had them just right. Roger helped me get them up on the wall and I sewed some crushed voile panels to hang with lengths of ribbon.

I love how they turned out. I think there's a fun contrast between the rustic branch and the silky, breezy curtains. Softened up our bedroom windows really well.

We've been in the new house for almost one year so naturally it was time to tear something up. :)
This thing had to go!

I've never had a pedestal sink before and I never will again. What a pain! No place to put a bottle of hand soap. And it was originally installed just a fraction of an inch too high so it was constantly pulling loose from the wall no matter how many times we had the builder come and fix it. ugh! So we had it ripped out and replaced with a vanity and granite counter top to match the rest of the house. So.much.better!  I didn't think to take an "after" pic though. Trust me. It's better.

Emily is off track so we've been trying to find some fun things to do. This week we made paper flowers. I can't believe we've never done this before. So easy, cheap and fun.

We'll hang these in Emily's room for a fun bit of color. But we might use them to decorate for Kenzie's graduation party first.
We had a couple of failed attempts too. Emily wanted to make one without trimming the edges. Just the straight edge of the paper. Even crumpling it up didn't help.

And I thought this polka dot paper would make a fun flower.

Not so much. It was thicker and stiffer than the solid colors. And it's only printed on one side. duh!
Oh well. As my Dad used to say, you win some, you lose some.
This orange one is my favorite.

Well, that's a bit of what we've been up to. Yesterday we went to the zoo and out for dinner but I'll save all those awesome pics for another post.
Bet ya can't wait! ;)

Thursday - Errands

In an effort to save some money, I've been running all my errands on one day each week.
Yesterday was the day.
I had lunch with my favorite handsome little man.

And then, since Sweet Tooth Fairy was right across the street... (Coincidence? I'll never tell.)

Jaxon had the "grasshopper" cupcake. That was the one he chose the first time we went there and it's the only one he'll ever get. If it ain't broke, don't fix it I guess.
Next stop: Best Buy. In another bold move to reduce our costs, I am leaving Verizon. Ack! Scary, right?
I bought a new phone. A prepaid plan will give me more features for half the price I was paying Verizon.

 Touch screen. woohooo! Look at me being all 5 years ago!
Of course, it's not set up yet. I wanted to keep my old phone number but the half dozen Best Buy associates at the cell phone desk were WAY too busy discussing the impending BYU basketball game to be of any assistance to little old me. Pfft! So I'm doing it on my own. If you need to call me...you might want to try the home phone for a couple of days.
Stupid sports!!!
Next stop was the bank.
Then the water place. No matter how much I want to save money, I CANNOT drink the water that comes from our tap. Gag!
Then on to Comcast to deliver one box full of expensive television paraphernalia.

Another cost cutting move.
I'm not gonna lie. I had some anxiety while disconnecting all this stuff. With each wire I removed I was thinking about the 15 episodes of Castle that I DVRed but never got around to watching. And the 12 episodes of The Upside Down Show that Jaxon has watched about 30 times each.
But we still have basic cable and now we have Netflix streaming in whenever we want, so I think we'll be okay.
We'll be okay, right? *whimper*
Next stop was the airport to pick up Dad returning from a business trip.

Can I just say that people who don't PARK to wait in the PARK and wait lot really tick me off?
It's already a pretty tight squeeze in there and they just kind of pull off to the side of the entry and exit lanes and make it even harder to maneuver around when your pick up is ready. Grr!!!
The rest of the evening was spent having some dinner and getting the TV's hooked back up with basic cable.
Refreshingly simple task when you decide to go "old school" with television.
Dave Ramsey would be so proud. I'll be calling his show to yell, "We're debt free! FREEEEEDOOOOMMM!!!!" if it kills me.