The Mickelsen's Monkeyshines

Our 3 Year Old

2012-01-13T08:24:00.000-08:00

I am a little alarmed that I have somehow become the mother to a 5 and 3 year old, and a new(ish) baby. Of the three children, I think the 3 year old is the most challenging. I feel comfort in thinking that most mother's of 3 year olds would probably agree with me. Despite her attitude, we still love her to pieces.

We celebrated Mickelsen/Ward style. That's code for it was very low key. James and I both grew up with low key birthdays, so that's how we celebrate with our kids! We invited cousins over to help us celebrate. The birthday girl, Lizzy is in front. We got the kids a pizza (always a favorite) and soda! to drink. I'm pretty sure Lizzy didn't wholly grasp the birthday concept at first. She was just happy to see her cousins and eat pizza.

Around present opening time I could tell she thought the day was pretty cool because she got to open presents.

However, her day wasn't super special until we sang happy birthday to her. I SO badly wish I had recorded it on video. The song started and she thought it was all normal, but then she realized we were singing to her! The smile in this next picture shows how happy she was. Her happy smile was SO SO CUTE! I know she felt really special, and I'm glad she got to experience that feeling, because I think all to often she feels like the classic middle child.

Siri enjoyed the aftermath of the party. Balloons.

So, my little Lizzy girl. What should I say about you? I fear there would be too much to say. You are a bossy, sassy girl who loves unconditionally, loves to give hugs, be held, and give crazy kisses. I'll admit that your sass is so bad, that this next year might be a long one. However, when you are happy, your dad and I can't get enough of you. Your smile is absolutely infectious.

Some quick facts about you.
-Lizzy, you are a tall girl. I'm sorry about that. When I took you in for your 3 year well check, the doctor thought you were 4 because you are so tall. At nearly 40 inches tall, that makes you taller than 97% of the other girls your age.
-You can count to 12, a trick that took us by surprise because we've never tried to teach you how to count.
-You only recognize a few letters, "W" being the one you are most comfortable with. Random.
-You know your shapes and colors.
-You are addicted to you thumb. We have broken the habit numerous times, but after about a month of not sucking your thumb, you suddenly start again.
-You love pink and purple.
-After I do your hair every day, you quickly find somebody to show off too and then tell them that you are pretty.
-You will NOT wear socks. You agree to wear them while you have shoes on, but once the opportunity presents itself, you will promptly take them off. You would rather play outside on a winter day with no socks and shoes on.
-You talk a lot, but you are hard to understand. Your speech isn't clear, but it's coming along just the same.
-You are my beautiful little girl, and I love you to bits and pieces. Thank you for being you. Sass and all.

Interesting Phone Conversation

2011-12-19T11:51:00.000-08:00

On Saturday my sister called me to see our mom owned the Janice Kapp Perry music book called Just One Little Light. She was searching for one song in particular. I was able to find it in the music collection and we got talking about what it would take to legally make copies of the song for my sister's purposes. The book was published in 1988, and it included a phone number to call if you were inquiring about making photocopies. I called it and a very tired old woman answered with a simple hello. I explained what I was calling about, thinking that the book was so old that this number could no longer be valid especially after the simple hello greeting; as opposed to an official business of sorts that would handle copyright issues. Anyway, after explaining what I was after, the tired sounding old lady said, "Well, this is Janice. What you need to do is go to janicekapppery.com and click on photocopies". I thanked her and then hung up.

So now the question is, did I really talk to Janice Kapp Perry?

Sorry Pam

2011-12-17T12:52:00.000-08:00

In high school I had a good friend named Pam. Pam had the most beautiful extra long hair I've ever seen. Down past her bum kind of long. It was healthy, shiny, and super fantastic to look at on the random occasion that she would wear it down. All through high school my hair was short. Really short most of the time. I somehow talked Pam into cutting her hair with the condition that I would grown my hair out to a certain length. Pam went through with the hair cut (don't worry, she still left it plenty long) but I, however, have never managed to grow my hair out to that specified length we agreed on.

Giving a point of reference.

The specified length would be to where my finger is pointing. I really thought I might get there this go around with growing out my hair. But, alas, my hair has been falling out at quite an alarming rate since Siri's birth and James was pretty insistent that I cut it before I go bald. (Only two more inches and I would have done it!)

Now I look like me again. I thought I might be sad to lose those few years of effort in growing out my hair, but not so! I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE, having short hair again!!! Makes me wonder why I waited so long to cut it.

Sorry Pam. Maybe, one day.

New Technique

2011-12-17T12:39:00.000-08:00

Lizzy's birthday is in a few days, but we are celebrating early. Of course I made her a cake, and I was excited to try something new!

James gives me a hard time because I can never smile normally for a picture.

The birthday girl's cake.

Ok, so the new (to me) technique I used is called a frozen butter cream transfer. If you'll refer to the picture below, you will have a better understanding of what I did.

I found a picture of mickey and minnie, printed it out and, put wax paper on top of it, then traced it out with frosting. That's it in a nutshell. If I could do it over again, I would only change one thing. I would make sure I taped down the wax paper super tight on all sides. You can see the waves in the frosting because my wax paper wasn't secured tightly. Oh well. Overall, I'm super pleased with this first time effort.

On to the next cake.

I made this one for my nephew's cousin. I threw it together in literally a couple of hours from baking to finished. I've seen a lot of pictures of shirt cakes and I've been wanting to try one. There are a few extra things I could have done, but time was short.

Sorry I've been MIA for a while. We'll see if my attendance here improves.

Sweet Siri Monster

2011-09-24T08:56:00.000-07:00

James likes to call her the Siri Monster. Nice term of endearment, no?

Well, everybody says how hard three kids is. I haven't really thought so, but my blog is showing signs of neglect since I've had #3, which must be proof that 3 is harder than 2. But if this cute little munchkin is what's keeping me from doing other things, that is just fine with me.

Clearly she is the center of attention around here.

We blessed this cute little baby on September 4th. Siri is showing off her beautiful slip that my Mom went overboard sewing and embroidering.

This is her actual blessing dress which is a miniature version of my wedding dress. I think my mom took a little too much pleasure in cutting up such an expensive gown. It turned out so pretty that I don't regret it for a second.

Siri hit her two month "birthday" on September 6th. I've been willing her to stay 1 week old, but it just isn't happening. She is staying smaller longer than my other two babies though. That's a plus for me!

Logan and Lizzy were both thumb suckers, but I attributed it to the fact that I was stingy giving them a pacifier. (I have nothing against pacifiers other than they NEVER stay in the mouth, therefore I just didn't offer them a lot.) Anyway, Logan broke his thumb sucking habit fairly easily, but Lizzy can't be stopped. I determined to make Siri a pacifier baby, offering it even when she didn't want/need it. Well, guess what happened?

She prefers her thumb anyway. See the rejected pacifier? Yeah, she won't suck on them anymore. Gah. Oh well.

Isn't she the cutest? We think so. Really. We can't get enough of her.

Some quick facts about our 12 week old angel.

Turns out she has a slight allergy to milk. I'm hoping this goes away before she's a year old.

She weighed in at 10 lbs 15 oz at her 2 month appointment. That puts her in the 60% for weight. She is 75% in height and her head was 95%.

Siri takes 4 naps a day, eats 6 times and sleeps from 9:45PM until 7:15ishAM. The middle of the night feedings ended completely when she was 10 weeks old. Yay!

She is a pretty happy baby, but she lets us know when it's nap time. She starts to get fussy.

She happily lies on the ground observing everything around her. Don't hold her in your arms cradle style. She doesn't like that. But she is happy to be held over your shoulder.

She tolerates me and her sibling just fine, but she has a definite favorite person in the house and that is Daddy. She LOVES her daddy, and he loves her right back. It's really very sweet. I would be jealous, but how can I be? Their bond is just too precious.

Hopefully I find the motivation to update more. I know you've all been missing my updates. ;)

Time Flies

2011-08-19T09:18:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure I've ever gone so long with out a post. My brain feels like mush, but life has been wonderful for the last 6 weeks. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I'm not a big picture taker. The following pictures are nearly all of the pics I've taken in the last 6 weeks.

3 weeks ago we drove to Idaho to show off Siri to James' side of the family. James took the kids on multiple 4-wheeler rides along with spending a day out on the boat.

This is Logan, Lizzy, James and our niece Taylor.

James spent some time working in the greenhouse. He took Logan with him too. This is Logan, Dalton and Morgan, our nephews. Dalton just got his mission call to the Marshall Islands. Woohoo! We are SO excited for him!!!

These are my three sweet angels. They don't always act so angelic, but we love them to pieces anyway.

Siri is 6 weeks old this week. It's hard to get a cute picture of her, especially because she hasn't started smiling yet.

Logan did Lizzy's hair for her one day. Do you think he did a good job?

This little girl makes lots of funny faces.

Last week we said hello and then goodbye to our family visiting from Maryland. My sister and her family lives there, but Logan had a blast playing with his cousins for the week they were here.

So now you are pretty much up to snuff on what has happened in our lives for the past 6 weeks. People have been asking me how it has been to adjust to 3 kids, so I'll tell you what I think.

I've been tired. But I was tired before I had Siri, so what's new? Actually, I've been less tired lately, due to a sweet little girl that allows me to get some sleep. For the last week Siri has made it a habit to sleep anywhere from 6-8 hours at a time at night. I realize some babies learn how to sleep through the night very fast, but I attribute her skills to applying the principles I learned from the book On Becoming Babywise. I've done it with all three kids and I am a TRUE believer.

Let me start this next paragraph by saying that I am a whiner. Everything seems hard to me, and I'm quick to complain about the easiest of tasks. However, the transition to child number 3 has probably been the easiest one. Logan was our first kid, and the hardest in my opinion. But I think that is just because I had NO clue what I was doing or what to expect. Lizzy would have/should have been the easiest to transition to. She was a perfect baby during the day but as soon as 10:00 PM hit she would cry. And cry. And cry. Until she was 12 weeks old. That's when she stopped crying and starting sleeping. Siri would have been an extremely difficult baby for me if she had been my first baby. Luckily, I really know what to expect this time, and I won't be thrown off by her curve balls. She had a very difficult time learning how to nurse, and we've dealt a lot with some major tummy gas issues, but we seem to be past that for the most part. I've never felt overwhelmed with having the three kids, and for that I am SO grateful. After the birth of the older two kids I felt completely and totally done having kids. No more, thank you very much. But, three has been easy enough that I am readily admitting to wanting more kids. (Just give us 1-2 years please.)

The main message I am trying to convey is that I feel SO blessed. Heavenly Father has held my hand through this transition and has made it very easy. Logan and Lizzy have made the adjustment well and without a doubt, James and I are closer and more in love with each other than ever before. It truly baffles my mind that you can love a person more and more the longer you spend with them. (Seems like you should get more and more tired of them.) There has never been another person in my life (besides my parents, but that's a given) who has loved me so thoroughly, given so much of themselves to ensure my happiness, and told me multiple times on a daily basis that they love me than James has and does. I am a lucky, lucky girl and my kids are lucky, lucky kids. I'm not sure there is a better daddy or husband out there.

Baby Siri is Here

2011-07-07T13:25:00.000-07:00

We had Siri yesterday. Everything went really well, thank goodness. James was more nervous than I was the whole day. He just kept saying he would feel better after it was all over and he could see that we were both OK and healthy.

When the doctor came in to break my water, he asked James if it would make him sick to watch. I laughed and said that James had delivered tons of cows, so this should be nothing. I think that impressed the doctor, so when it was time to deliver (just shy of 4 hours later), the doctor told James to put gloves on. James assumed he was wearing the gloves because the doctor would let him touch the head, or something similar, during delivery. He was surprised when the doctor took my leg and told James to stand in where the doctor was supposed to be.

The doctor supported my foot against his hip so that he was still hands free in case James needed some assistance delivering the baby. James did great, but was uncomfortable pulling on Siri's head per the doctor's instructions. The look on James' face was hilarious and I was laughing the whole time I was pushing. (Not easy to do at the same time.)

I wish the pictures of James pulling Siri out were appropriate, but they're not. Oh well. James loved that he got to deliver the baby. It was much more than just catching her, he had to pull her head, turn her, push down, then pull up and then handed her to me! That was a very special experience for him and I think it endeared him to our doctor forever for letting him do it. :0)

Our friend Carlee came to watch the birth. Luckily she agreed to come, because (despite charging the battery last week and checking it before we came) our camera battery was completely dead. Carlee took all the pictures with her camera, and she did a wonderful job of documenting the whole thing.

With her swollen face, Siri looked very alienesque for the first couple of hours. I couldn't stop laughing at her; she looked SO funny to me. She kept making hilarious faces and contorting her face in the strangest ways. Maybe I'll do another post of the many faces of newborn Siri.

That left eye of hers tend to give you the "What you looking at?" look.

I'm not really so surprised to see my baby. She had just yawned and I couldn't help but imitate it.

It's been a very calm and peaceful day since she's been born. We ABSOLUTELY love her to pieces. The kids do to. Lizzy just wanted to sit by her and pet her head over and over again. I'm just trying to enjoy the remaining hours of peace until I am in charge of all three kids.

Wow. I've got three kids...

Good Friends

2011-06-29T09:35:00.000-07:00

Good friends are priceless, which is why it's weird that I really only like to have a couple of really close friends at a time. For some reason, I really struggle with large groups of friends. I like to have lots of general friends, you know, the people you can make polite conversation with whenever you see them, but I really just like a couple of really close friends.

I feel well established in the close friendships that I do have. They know who they are. I just wanted to give a big thank you to all of you for all that you do for me. I always worry that I never contribute enough to my friendships...but...maybe I do. Because you are still my friends.

Buffy and Barlow

2011-06-25T07:25:00.000-07:00

Random story, so I hope it translates well. Oh, and if you don't get the title of this post, watch TV and read a Stephen King novel. (Salem's Lot in case you are really interested.)

A couple of nights ago, I was in our room, and James was somewhere else in the house. I decided to go work on an upcoming cake, and that required a dowel, which I knew was in my closet. So, I went to grab the dowel and discovered this broken one, with the sharp end.

I grabbed the dowel and headed for the door. I opened it and was face to face with James who was just about to come in to hang something up using the two thumb tacks also in the above picture. However, he wasn't just holding the tacks in his hand; they were in either side of his mouth, looking like sharp vampire teeth.

We stood staring at each other in silence for a good 3-5 seconds before we both busted up laughing.

Just Wondering...

2011-05-28T20:38:00.000-07:00

To preface this, I want to assure you all that I don't write this with an air of self righteousness. Just look at it this way. We all have pet peeves, right? Well, mine is being late. I was lucky enough to marry a man who feels the same way I do about being on time. (Actually, at times I've wondered if it could be a bad thing, depending on the circumstances.) If I'm even a minute or two late somewhere, I will apologize. It's ingrained in me to be on time; anything less would be unacceptable to me. But, I recognize that James and I are near anomalies Almost everybody in this world is late, at least by a few minutes, (some 20-60 minutes) and it seems they think nothing of it.

So, my question is this. If I am going to somebody's house, and this somebody is notoriously late to EVERYTHING they go to, do they expect me to show up on time, or to be late? It's a real question. What are they expecting? If they are late to everything they go to, it seems only logical that they wouldn't expect me to show up on time to their house, right? Or am I wrong. I am genuinely curious. Any of you late type people have the answer for me?

Lost Self Identity

2011-05-14T08:34:00.000-07:00

I just scrolled through the most recent pictures I've taken of Logan in the last few months. Let me share a few of them (ok, most of them; we don't take many pictures) with you.

Notice anything in common? Yep, that red cowboy hat.

One day I was at Wal-Mart, saw this hat for $5, and on a whim I bought it. My original thought was that both Logan and Lizzy would enjoy playing dress up with it. In fact Lizzy, wore it pretty much the whole day that day. Somehow, with out our noticing it, Logan started wearing this hat Every. Single. Day. There are very few moments that Logan does not have it on his head, and occasionally, in those moments, Lizzy will get her hands on it. This freaks Logan out to the extreme, and he'll rip it out of her hands, which of course is always followed by hysterical screaming from Lizzy.

One night, earlier this week, James was gone, it was bedtime, and my nerves were frayed. Logan had taken off his hat for the night, and of course, Lizzy got her hands on it. Reacting as he normally does, Logan quickly reclaimed what he thinks belongs to him. Lizzy's screaming was a little too much for my frayed nerves. I confiscated the hat and told Logan that the hat does not belong to him, it belongs to me. As punishment for being mean to Lizzy, he was not allowed to wear the hat the next day. If I thought Lizzy was crying hysterically, I was wrong. Logan's crying trumped hers. He tried to argue with me about wearing his hat, but I kept insisting that he would not be allowed to wear the hat the next day. As his last resort of an argument, he said, through snot and tears, "but Mom, if I don't wear my hat, I won't be me"!

Somehow Logan still managed to be himself the next day, but his hat wearing resumed without fail the day after.

Look! He's hatless!

Shnaziversary

2011-04-30T07:00:00.000-07:00

8 years ago I married a very amazing man.

Really handsome too, isn't he?

We were officially engaged December 2002 and married April 30, 2003.

We finished up college together, and excitedly looked forward to the rest of our lives together. You can't tell, but in this picture I wanted to puke. (Pregnant with Logan.)

Being new parents didn't stop us from being our young and silly selves.

We moved a few times trying to find the right place to settle down.

We found a great home in West Jordan, and worked on expanding our family to include Lizzy.

Even with a moody little girl in our lives, we are still happy.

And we still act young and silly together whenever we can.

We took our first grown up vacation this last year and now look forward to baby number 3.

Some have asked us if the "seven year itch" got to us, but we can both give that a resounding no. Our seventh year was the best one yet. I'm the luckiest girl in the world to be married to James. He's 100% invested in his family, so what's not to love? Year 8 should be great!

The Joys of Pregnancy

2011-04-16T06:20:00.000-07:00

I can think of a few. (Keep in mind, I don't enjoy all of these, so I'll put a star next to the ones that I do enjoy at one point or another during pregnancy.)

*Throwing up
*Stretch Marks
*Swollen Feet
*Swollen hands
*Swollen everything
*Eczema so bad you feel like your bones are itching
*Hemorrhoids
*Constipation
*Lack of sleep because you are SO uncomfortable
Broken ribs
*Husband comments on how you look like a beached whale (he meant this in love, and I was not offended)
*Back aches
*Out of control weight gain
"The Mask" of pregnancy
*Having to pee in a cup every 4 then 2, then 1 weeks, and missing the cup because your belly is SO big you can't see what you're doing
*Taking horse pills every day (aka prenatal supplements), and oh yeah, the iron one too because your baby is sucking all of that away from you
*Cavities because the baby wants your calcium too
*The indignity of maternity pants
*Pubis symphisis dysfunction (you don't know it, but it hurts)
*Walking like a penguin
*Averaging 3 trips to the bathroom in the middle of the night

I've missed some. I know it. Why the list you ask? Because of the last one on the list. The trips to the bathroom. I was on my second trip (it was only 11:15 and I had turned off the light at 10:45) and I realized how BLESSED I am to have indoor plumbing. Seriously, I can't imagine having to hike out to the outhouse 5 times a night, in a foot of snow, just because this baby loves hanging out on my bladder. The thought was almost enough to get me out of bed a third time to give that porcelain thrown a kiss.

I resisted.

8 months pregnant with Logan

8 months pregnant with Lizzy

6 months pregnant now

Newborn Logan

Newborn Lizzy

And here's where I am longing to see a newborn picture of Siri. 3 more months.

This post may seem like just a long list of complaints, but I followed it up with the most precious pictures you can imagine. I wouldn't trade the gift of being pregnant with my own children for anything. My heart breaks for the way too many couples who are infertile. Despite the many "hardships" of pregnancy, it really is a wonderful, magical experience. My Heavenly Father has blessed me greatly.

Conference Monkey bread

2011-04-03T08:29:00.000-07:00

I don't know how often my Mom made monkey bread for conference, but obviously it was often enough that I associate monkey bread with conference. Six months ago, I decided that I wanted to make conference day monkey bread a tradition in my own home. I emailed my sister (who I know makes it every conference) to ask her for the recipe. She uses a different bread recipe than my Mom did, but that doesn't matter. All you need is dough. So even though I will include my sister's bread recipe, keep in mind, you can use any bread recipe, or even use frozen dough, like rhodes rolls.

60 Minute Rolls

Combine:
3 1/2 C. flour
1/4 C. sugar
2 Tbsp. yeast

2 Tbsp. dry milk powder
1 tsp. salt

In a glass measuring cup combine:
1 1/2 C. hottest tap water
1/4 C. oil
Gradually pour the liquid into the dry mixture, stirring. Beat (by hand or mixer) for 1 minute.
Gradually add:
1 C. flour
and knead for 4 minutes. Cover and let rise for 15 minutes.

While it is rising, get two bowls.
Bowl 1: 1 stick of melted butter or margarine
Bowl 2: combine 1 1/2 cups of sugar with 2 tablespoons cinnamon.

Spray a bundt pan, and sprinkle some of the cinnamon sugar mixture on the bottom.

After the rolls have risen for 15 minutes, punch the dough down, and pinch off golf ball sized pieces. Drench them in butter and then roll them in the cinnamon sugar. Layer the dough balls in your pan. I like to sprinkle extra cinnamon sugar between the layers of dough balls. Let rise another 15 minutes.

Cook in the oven at 375 for 20-25 minutes. Dump them out and enjoy!

Memory Lane

2011-03-27T19:22:00.000-07:00

I don't think it's any mystery to people who know me that I like cake. Most of the time, I enjoy the opportunity to make a new creation, some of the time I don't. It's been a strange process for me to slowly gain confidence in my (still lacking) skills. I'm far from the point of feeling like a professional, but I am closer and closer to the point of wanting to charge a fair price for my cakes. I actually feel a lot of frustration over that part and here is why.

For the most part, it is just my friends asking me to make cakes for them. I can't charge them too much for two reasons. Number 1: they are my friends. Number 2: they would just make do without the fancy cake and then I would have lost the opportunity to let my skills grow. I have had a few strangers, or less then close friends ask for cakes, and when I tell them what I want to charge, they don't hire me. James and I talked this through last night and decided that it's because I haven't set myself up to look like a professional; you know, a blog or what not with official pricing etc. The thing is, I just don't want to do that. I don't want to make cakes on a regular basis. I like the "every now and then" cakes. Plus...THE PRESSURE to make the perfect cake for a real paying customer! I just don't think I could handle it.

Big sigh. Oh well. For now I am stuck in cake pricing limbo. One day (when I'm done birthing and raising little children) I may set something up more official where I feel like I can charge more official prices. Until then, I'm still learning and acquiring good skills, and I'm grateful for great friends who let me experiment on them.

This was Logan's cake two birthdays ago. He is very excited for his upcoming 5th birthday. He has specifically asked for a spider man cake, and I'm glad that I can deliver what he wants. Whenever he is invited to a birthday party, he constantly nags me what their cake will look like. Think he's surrounded by cake?

My third ever wedding cake. (Believe me, you don't want to see the first. I didn't even take a picture of it, that's how bad it was.)

4th wedding cake. As is the case with most cakes I've made, I wish I could go back and do this one over. No particular reason other than I just know I could do it better now. Interesting side note: I had my wisdom teeth removed 1 hour after I delivered this cake. It was also our anniversary.

I LOVED making this Phantom cake, but again, I want a redo. I could make that rose look so much more realistic!

A fun experiment for my friend's birthday.

Doing these "birthday present" cakes feels like old hat to me now.

Who doesn't love elmo?

My latest creation, and one that I'm very proud of for a very specific reason. I dreamed it up all on my own! I normally have to steal ideas from a book or the internet. But not these Mickey Mouse cakes. These were all me! (All 15 of them!)

Isn't it funny how the things that bring you the most frustration also bring you the most joy? I know we all feel that way about our children, but who else feels that way about their hobbies? Baking and decorating cakes brings out the very best and the very worst in me. Now I just need to figure out how to focus on the best and leave out the worst.

Who's is He?

2011-03-11T06:58:00.000-08:00

My mom made me make my bed every day.

I don't know what James' mom's rule was, but even if it wasn't required, I have no doubt that each of her children made their beds every day anyway.

One day when Logan was 2 years old, we asked him if he would start making his bed. That's all it took. He makes his bed about 6 out of 7 days of the week with out being asked. And on the days he forgets, he acts devastated when he discovers his unmade bed that night.

In another story, all it's own, Lizzy has started acting scared of sleeping in her own room. The only way she would sleep in there was if we put the rail back on her crib. I wasn't comfortable with that since Siri's due date just a few months away. So, last night I took Lizzy shopping for her new bedding. We moved all of her stuff into Logan's room and made up the lower bunk with her new blankets. Last night was their first official night of sharing a room together.

Miracle that I hope continues: they slept great. Granted, they did wake up about 30 minutes earlier than normal, but I expected that.

Now the story gets strange. I got myself up and dressed and as I walked past their room, I decided to poke my head in just for fun. What I saw was that both bunks were made up.

I return to my question; who's is he? The answer is obvious. He's a Mickelsen.

(FYI, I make our own bed every morning. Not James.)

New Challenges

2011-03-05T07:34:00.000-08:00

This cake was full of new challenges for me. Luckily, I have good and understanding friends who will let me experiment on their cakes. I'll walk you through it, ok? Not that you care, but I do, and this is my blog. :)

Challenge number 1: The hibiscus flowers. If you google how to make those, they will tell you to special order special tools to make them. I didn't want to to do that, so I combined all of the ideas I saw into one I knew I could do. I realize that a professional baker would make them look more realistic, but since the rest of the cake hardly looks realistic, I figure it works.

Challenge number 2: Making the Happy Birthday sign. I just don't have enough experience with gumpaste/fondant to know the best way to make the sign. Now that I've made that one, I have some ideas on how to improve it.

Challenge number 3: Making the girl. I have never made a person out of fondant before and really wasn't sure of the best way to go about it. I got to make this little gal twice because she was too long the first time.

Challenge number 4: Painting the sunrise on the top tier. I know you are all asking yourselves, "That's a sunrise"? Yeah, that's what it's supposed to be. I'm not so artistic and don't know how to paint at all. I watched a bunch of tutorials on youtube, but they still didn't seem to help. (I plan on taking a painting class some time in hopes that it will help me with future cakes.)

Challenge number 5: Making the coral. I'm kind of the most proud of the coral. Underneath all that royal icing are small grape stems. The coral took a lot of patience and faith that it would look good. I may have yelled at the kids a time or two while I was making it. They kept hovering waiting for me to give them a glob of royal icing to eat.

Not a challenge: Even though it was a first for me, making the seashells was not a challenge. I just used a chocolate mold and I have used chocolate molds before. Just not a seashell one, but that makes no difference. :)

Overall, this was a very fun cake to think up and create. I hope the birthday girl likes it, because I sure do. I'm usually quite critical of every cake I make, but I really am proud of this one. (Don't worry, I can still point out the MULTIPLE flaws with it, but as James always assures me, you probably won't notice them like I do.)

You Know You're Pregnant When...

2011-02-18T08:15:00.000-08:00

you bake a cake one day, and the next morning, when you go to get a piece, you are shocked to realize you ate HALF of the cake yesterday. The day you baked it. All by yourself.

It was really yummy.

Western Carribean Cruise

2011-02-02T11:12:00.000-08:00

A few highlights from our cruise:

James and his brother Matt climbing the rock wall on the ship.

The rock wall climbing champions.

Me and my love feeling fancy on formal night.

When we returned from dinner, this cute pup, wearing my sunglasses, was waiting for us.

The view in Roatan, Honduras.

A guide saw me taking the above picture and took pity on us. He took this picture for us.

All harnessed up and ready for the zip line.

This is me. I don't know how well you can tell, but the drop below was quite astounding.

My sexy man going as fast as he can on the zip line. (You get to control your own speed.)

Proof that we ate well, and had a great view while doing it.

This was our ship docked in Roatan.

I know you're all checking out my hot hubby, so you won't notice my crazy sunburned chest.

This was the beach we played at in Belize.

A view of the dock in Belize.

The other side of the dock in Belize.

We found our own beach to play on in Cozumel. Do you see the little crab by the tip of nose?

Here is little crab's close up. I liked following him around. I think he wasn't so fond of me though.

Click on the picture for a close up. Matt had just pelted James with a sand ball.

I was sad not to have any buckets to make a sand castle with, so I used the skills I had and made a sand cake. Don't you like the sea shell topper and sea weed "flowers"?

A couple of monkeys. This is James' "must keep my eyes open for the picture" look.

Queen of the world.

King of the world.

Last night at dinner. Starting at the bottom left, moving from left to right, then up and to the left again:

Jenny (sister), Becky (sister), Scott (Becky's hubby), Mandy (sister), Jason (Mandy's hubby,) up, Me (James' wife) James (coolest person in the world), Roy (Dixie's hubby), Dixie (Mom), Matt (brother), Ramie (Matt's wifey), Doug (Jenny's hubby).

Man, what a trip. We had a lot of fun but we were glad to come home to be grown ups again. Believe me, sometimes we did not act like grownups while on this trip.

The highlights of our trip that aren't photographed include me and Dixie singing Karaoke, Jason becoming the ships belly flop champion, watching Mandy plow over two old women so she could win a point for the women in the battle of the sexes game, watching the love and marriage show and laughing till our sides hurt, holding a jelly fish, seeing dolphins, playing the Quest game which included James wearing lipstick among other things, and many more fun activities.

When we got home, we compared notes with my Mom who had also just gotten home from a cruise. She's cruised a quite a bit, and we wondered if she had every cruised with Royal Caribbean. She hadn't. And from what it sounded like, Royal Caribbean is the way to go. James and I were blown away by how incredibly nice the whole staff was. Too bad they haven't paid me for this free advertising, but I would completely and totally recommend cruising with Royal Caribbean. It was awesome!

Finally!

2011-01-31T10:17:00.000-08:00

I think everybody that is really important in our lives, now knows that we are expecting baby number 3. Because of the 3 miscarriages that I've had, I feel like I should be pregnant with number 4... but I am so excited just to be expecting. Number 4 will come in time.

I now realize that the excitement of carrying a baby doesn't get old, no matter how many babies you have. Of course, that excitement is really strong for the first two weeks of pregnancy, and then wanes dramatically as you hold your head over the toilet bowl for the next 12 weeks. After that, the baby love returns with full force.

My friend, and ultra-sound technician, Tiffany, happily and willingly did an ultra sound two weeks ago. I kept my eyes averted from the screen so that I wouldn't know if it was a boy or a girl. She put the results in a sealed envelope and I went home. James and I had originally planned to give the envelope to Dixie (James' mom) over dinner our first night of our cruise. We had determined that it would be the first and best moment with all of James' family to make the announcement. Only two of his siblings knew that we were pregnant, so it was a surprise for everybody else. Anyway, I say that was the original plan because that's not what happened. We were surprised to have almost everybody in our home the night before we left on the cruise, so we figured that would be as good a time as any. We were happy and excited to find out that baby number three is a girl.

It makes all the difference to know what you're having. I think James was slightly disappointed at first that it wasn't a boy (mostly because he LOVES the boy name we have picked out) but now that he can focus on the fact that we are having a girl, he is very excited. Lizzy has him wrapped around her finger, and he knows it, so the prospect of another little girl to love is exciting to him. James chose the name Siri Juliette. (Siri means, victorious beauty. Cool huh?) I completely gave him the choice because he really resisted the boy name that I had chosen for a while, but I was pretty insistent on the boy name, so he had agreed to it. (Little did I know how much he would fall in love with the boy name to the point that he REALLY wanted a boy so we could use it!) Anyway, I would have chosen a different girl name, but thought it was only fair to let him decide.

So, there's the news that everybody already knew! We anxiously look forward to this summer, when we will finally be a family of 5!

Stay tuned for a post about our cruise.

"I Speak Chinese"

2011-01-13T14:53:00.000-08:00

If any of us could understand Chinese, we might be able to understand Lizzy.

Lizzy knows a lot of words, but she LOVES to talk, and this is how she talks. She does it the most when she is on the phone with her Daddy. She loves talking to him on the phone. He, of course, loves it.

Good News

2011-01-07T09:09:00.000-08:00

Warning! Boring story to follow!

There is no doubt, and we won't deny it, that James is stuck in a dead end job. Installing cable for comcast hardly feels like a real career. Why doesn't he just quit then, you ask? The money is too good. Even if that weren't an issue, James has no idea what he wants to do. He knows what he can't and won't do, but anything that sounds appealing to him just isn't a career type of job.

We're taking steps to get James away from this job, but if our plans work out, he still has to work there for another 5-10 years, which is fine to some extent. The problem has been that this last year, a lot of changes have been made at his job that has made it worse instead of a better situation. He's had to work mandatory over time for the last 9 months. His only day off is Sunday, except on the occasions that he hasn't had to work overtime, he also gets Monday off. (This is a pain in the neck for a few reasons, but mostly because any time there is service to be done within the church, it takes place on Saturday, a day that James works.) James has had to trade in his nice vehicle for a less nice vehicle. The way that their work is assigned out has changed in such a way that James gets less jobs done = less money, and he is gone for longer hours. Now they have completely changed the way they get paid and so far the result is less money. Overall, the changes made have not been beneficial to us and have had an overall affect of James starting to resent his job.

For the last 5 years that James has worked for Pioneer, the only cable they have installed is residential. That means he gets to go into 2-5 different houses each day. (People aren't as clean as one would hope. James has put his knees into many a dog's pee and poop pile.) However, Comcast just informed Pioneer that they could choose around 5 of their employees to start installing for businesses. That means, for the technicians chosen: no dog pee or poop. Or smoke, porn, or druggies. No more being yelled at by customers, having neighbors call the cops because he is in their back yard, no more being accused of stealing prescription meds and marijuana, no more awkward feelings of installing cable while the girl who is hitting on him decides to use the bathroom right next to where he is working and purposely leaves the door open while she is doing her business.

James has always been the favorite of his bosses. I know James will be embarrassed that I'm bragging about him right now, but the fact of the matter is that he is the best employee they have, bar none. His bosses know it too, and James has the nickname of "Poster Boy" among the other technicians. I'm proud of him but I'm not surprised either. I married him because he's the best!

So, what's the good news you ask? Because James is the best, he had first dibs on being one of the technicians installing for businesses. He jumped at the chance and honestly can't wait. The money is supposed to be better, he'll probably get a nicer vehicle again, he won't have to deal with mean, nasty people, and his favorite part of the whole deal: his new schedule will be working Monday through Friday!

He starts training on Tuesday, and it will last for two weeks. The draw back here is that he will only get paid $10 an hour during training. Oh well. It will be worth it. I'm so happy to see his spirits up and excited to do something new. He deserves every good thing that comes his way.

Lizzy is 2!

2010-12-23T07:39:00.000-08:00

So, blogger is a bit different and all these pictures are in here backwards from what I thought I was putting them in. Oh well!

This picture is of me with an inside view to the undecorated birthday cake. It made some people sad that I didn't decorate it.

The birthday girl with her cake. We let Logan blow out the candle. This must be his post blowing out the candle face. The kid makes a lot of weird faces. Just keep scrolling down to see what I mean.

Still missing three cake pans needed for the cake!

Family picture!

The birthday girl and her crooked smile.

Scoping out our plan of attack on the slide.

Super steep slide for a little girl. She crash landed at the bottom, but got up with a smile!

The ascent. I told you the pictures are in backwards.

Lizzy posing (crooked smile and all) on her "new" used rocking horse. She LOVES it and will shove you off if you get on it. Logan has already incurred her wrath.

Crooked smile again. She's opening her glow worm, and Logan is holding her parrot flash light. The flash light was from grandma and it has been a very loved toy already. Lizzy also got some pajamas and hair clips from her other grandma, and a new Christmas dress.

Weird face by Logan again. I picked Logan up from pre-school (with Lizzy in tow) and had James set out the birthday presents while we were gone. These were the looks on their faces when they came in the house and saw the presents.

My pretty princess in her new dress. Isn't she a doll?

Our little Lizabef sure keeps us entertained. She's got James wrapped around her finger. She learns new words every day, but once she learns them, they are not used with patience. As soon as she figured out the word "drink", she'll stand in front of the fridge and scream it at us until we get her some milk. She loves to get dressed every day, and she really loves taking all of my shoes out of the closet and wearing them around. Whenever her hair is done, I'll give it a quick spritz with hair spray, and she'll grin really big, admiring herself in the mirror while I do that.

Lizzy is a thumb sucker. Of the worst kind. I kind of think it's cute, because it makes her seem like she is still my baby, but James hates it, so we've gone to extreme measures to stop it. She seemed to like the taste of hot sauce. The special, no sucking your thumb, nail polish had no effect (but it worked on Logan!). We've duct taped her thumbs, but she either just pulls it off (how?!) or she just sucks her thumb with the duct tape on it. We've just stayed on top of the situation, constantly telling her to take it out, or taking it out for her. Through this all, we've discovered that she is a very determined child, and will probably always get what she wants because she won't have it any other way.

Lizzy loves books, and to be sung to. She loves to give hugs and to be held. She is a very loving child. Every night after our bedtime routine, she squeals with delight as she runs down the hall to her room. She'll jump in bed and then insist on giving her daddy a million and one hugs. (She loves this routine so much, that she refuses to let me be the one put her to bed. Daddy needs to do it.) She cries every night when daddy ends the hugging, and turns out the light.

At Lizzy's 18 month appointment, she gave the doctor a good demonstration of her fit throwing skills. He calmly commented that it looked like she had entered "the terrible two's" a little early. It's was a "good sign" that she will come out of them earlier than most kids. I'm looking forward to that day. Lizzy is all drama; screaming at you if you look at her wrong. Really. This is most frustrating with Logan because he likes to look at her wrong a lot. He loves the screaming.

Lizzy is developing the way a normal, healthy two year old should. The only thing she is lacking is all of her teeth. She is still missing 4 teeth that she should have had a year ago, so to even consider her having her 2 year old molars is just laughable. We don't know when she'll get the rest of her teeth, but she doesn't seem to need them. She has always had an insatiable appetite, especially for apples, clementines, grapes, and tomatoes.

We love our little girl, and we feel so blessed to have had the last two years with her. We look forward to watching her grow up and become the strong, self confident woman we know she will be. Happy Birthday to my Lizzy Girl!

Strange Anxiety

2010-12-11T10:40:00.001-08:00

I woke up this morning remembering my dream, and realized that it was a common themed dream I've been having lately. Not the same dream, just the same theme. I wish I knew what it meant.

In my dream I was in high school, but with all the same demands of my adult life. It was a Tuesday, and I came upon a huge group of my friends from band class. Seeing them triggered a memory that Candlelight was the next two nights. (Candlelight is a huge musical production that my high school puts on every year at Christmas time. It's a very big deal.) I ran up to my friend, Andrea, and double checked with her that Candlelight was indeed the next two nights. She confirmed that it was. I became very agitated because I had other obligations those two nights (my real life adult responsibilities). I knew that if I missed the concert both nights I would get a failing grade in band. And that's just lame. Who fails band? Anyway, I woke up shortly after that.

My other dreams consist of me going to band class and not being able to find my trumpet, or my music. Or there will be other concerts that are going to be in the next couple of days, but I'm worried because I know I haven't practiced, or gone to band class at all, for that matter.

It's seriously ridiculous the amount of times I've had dreams like this. I'm not sure where they stem from either. I'm sure it says something about my regular anxiety levels of feeling prepared for things... but I don't really know.

Facebook Friend

2010-11-18T12:32:00.000-08:00

I'll admit that I'm not a great friend, I guess you could just call me a "facebook friend". Always around, but not really there. I've always tried to blame it on the fact that we moved around a lot when I was a kid, so I never got to keep the same friends for more than a few years. I had one friend from 5th grade, Shannon, that tried hard to keep in touch with me. It was my fault that we no longer really communicate. And I deeply regret that, for I had in her, truly a best friend that I lost. (Although, I did find her on facebook, yay!)

Ok, so the point I'm trying to get at: is my excuse is really just an excuse? My sister, only two years older than me, is a great friend to all her past friends from every place we've lived. She has made their friendship her priority. So what is wrong with me? I'm such a bad friend that I have told friends that after we or they move, I probably won't do a good job of staying up to date with them.

I'm a bad friend to any friend I used to have but no longer see. I'm sorry.

Change of subject, but it'll all loop back around, I promise.

Last night James and I were talking about how he would get into fist fights as a kid. The person he got into the most fist fights with was his best friend! I couldn't understand this. Not for the life of me. Why would two people who claim to be best friends, want to hit each other? I went to sleep perplexed. In the morning, I reread something my friend from high school (yep, still my friend!) wrote about me on facebook. It's one of those things where I had to hit "like" in order for her to answer a bunch of questions about me. Here it is:

@ Alicia 1- I've gotten to see all of your fabulous cakes when you post them on your facebook 2- You used to be red, but now you are lilac 3- My first memory of you was at church when we were Beehives, and I remember the first time you cal...led my Aunt Marnee, "Aunt Marnee" because you thought it was just a token title - you didn't know she was actually my aunt 4- You are a Dog, and I mean that in the very best way - you are dependable and loyal through and through 5- I've always wondered how I stack up against all of the new friends you have in your ward 6- My favorite thing about you is that no matter how long it's been since I've talked to you, I can call you and it feels like I can still say anything 7- My first impression of you was that you were pretty and you were competition and that you must be eliminated. ;-)

Did you see #5? Go back and read it again. I think I know why Jill wonders how she stacks up against all of my new friends. You see, every week I write an email that tells about my week. I send it to my whole family, and to two very good friends. Jill and Carlee. I don't ever spend time with Jill or Carlee, or talk to them on a regular basis, but I do spend time with other friends and I write about it in my email. #5 made me ponder how Jill does stack up against my other friends. And this is what I came to realize:

Jill and I used to fight. A lot. If girls were the type to get into fist fights, we both would have had some bruised eyes and broken noses. (Instead, girls fight with words.) But I know Jill and I will always be friends, because, well, we just will. We made a pinky promise to be neighbors in heaven, and that kind of promise doesn't just go away. Jill and I may not speak on a regular basis, but somehow our friendship became more solidified than any other.

I have to take a quick second to mention that the same goes for my friend Carlee. We've just been through too much with each other. I actually think we did hit each other a few times. :)

Is it the fighting with each other that marks the sign of a lasting friendship? I hope not. Because I have some great friends right now that I have never wanted to hit. I still doubt myself that I will be capable of keeping up with them if one or the other of us ever moves. But, I'd like to think that I'm growing up and can be more capable of being a good friend.

My Daddy

2010-11-14T07:55:00.000-08:00

I miss my dad. He died over three years ago, and I regret a lot things about not having him around anymore. My regrets mostly revolve around the fact that I don't have any good pictures of him. Theses two are pretty much the best ones I've got.

I like the above picture because I think James is A LOT like my dad. I guess I should ask my mom if she feels that way too. They also have birthday's one day apart. Hence they are both blowing out the candles. I like that I have a picture with both of them together.

You can tell in the one below how sick he was near the end. He passed just 6 months after this picture was taken. This was on my mom's birthday. As an interesting side note, I made both of the cakes. This was a time before my cake decorating fetish. But I had my fetish for eating good cake. :)

Another regret I have is not taking more advantage of the time I had with him, to ask him stories about himself etc. He loved to answer any questions, about anything, we ever had. That made him a great dad.

Anyway, like I said, he's been gone for over three years and I miss him. However, Heavenly Father blessed me with one of His tender mercies. About a year ago I pulled a random book off a shelf at my mom's house. (I don't remember what the book was.) But inside the book was a folded up piece of paper. Just at first glance it looks like a typed up letter and almost immediately I saw at the bottom of the page it said "written by Ronald E. Ward". That's my dad. My curiosity was piqued. I hurried to read what the letter said and was extremely surprised and touched by what I read.

May 29, 2002

When you start getting older there is a lot that can make you feel bad. You can't do half the things you used to do. You're no longer interested in most of the things that used to be entertaining. You can't remember things. It takes you twice as long to do basic chores. Your body aches when you want to lie down and rest.

There are so many things to make you feel bad that it's a very good thing to have your tail-end, last child be a happy, caring daughter. When my energy level would take me no further than the garage to play with some old worn out cars, Alicia was very supportive and even wanted to drive them for me.

Alicia has always been happy - and patient, with her elderly parents. I know she felt cheated to be raised by grandparents - who just happen to be her parents! but she has managed it well. When there are so many children in the family, someone has to be raised by old people.

Alicia has faced other challenges as well, and has been tenacious in holding out for what she thinks is best. Some of you may have heard us call her by her favorite nickname: "Jaws". She got that name by biting the side out of a glass cup when she was only about 3 years old. I think the milk wasn't coming out fast enough. We continued using the name, and she has been like a shark in going for things that are important to her. One challenge has been her position as child number 8, behind 7 strong, successful siblings. I know she has felt intimidated by them some times, but she has been "shark like" in establishing her self as a very talented and successful young lady. She has made the most of her situation and opportunities. (Here he hand wrote a note: trumpet, piano, singing.)

As a pre-schooler, she was once delivered to her school on a day when there was no class. When we realized the mistake and went to look for her, we found she was having a grand time just playing around the class room, making the most of her situation.

She is still like that. She can size up a situation and see what good can come from it, making that her focus.

She certainly deserves the Young Womanhood Recognition award. I know this is just the beginning of many notable accomplishments that will follow in her life.

written by Ronald E. Ward

I have zero memory of my dad reading this when I accepted my Young Womanhood Recognition award. And why it was stuck is some book is a mystery to me. But, now I have it and it is a treasure.

I miss you dad, but thank you for leaving me this small piece of you that lets me know that you are proud of me. I hope that I can always make you proud. Love you.

Happy Birthday Mary!

2010-11-03T18:59:00.000-07:00

It's not really her birthday yet, but I got to celebrate with her tonight. I don't normally bake birthday cakes for all my friends, but I got an idea for this cake and it reminded me a lot of my friend Mary, so I had to make it for her.

This picture confused James. We are not technologically savvy, so he didn't realize that Mary was actually taking a picture. He thought she was just on her phone. :)
A close up.

I had some good fun with this cake. I normally don't have so much creative release on a cake. Of course I see all the flaws on it, but for the most part, I am happy. I think the thing that made me happiest about this cake was that I got to paint it. I'm no artist, but I can handle painting in the lines, so to speak. Ok, ok I'm done talking about it. I hope you all like it to!

Pumpkin, Meet Saw.

2010-10-31T14:29:00.000-07:00

We had a fun Halloween this year. Logan was super shy when it came to trick or treating, but he was so excited that it was finally Halloween! He helped us carve pumpkins... kind of. James has gotten it in his head that he can no longer carve pumpkins the normal way. He needs to use his saw. He literally didn't use a knife once!
Lizzy was a witch (no costume change needed, but we put her in a dress and put a pointy hat on her head anyway) and Logan was Buzz.

I needed a picture of these two together. The unstoppable duo of Buzz Lightyear and Sheriff Woody! Woody is really Logan's favorite friend, Coleman.

The video is a small glimpse of James feeling all manly.

One of Jame's cousins commented that he doesn't understand why James is so dang skinny, what with all my baking going on. I wish I had the answer, but honestly, I'm trying to fatten him up!

I have a brother that is even skinner than James is. Years ago, my brother and I made a bet. I win the bet when my brother is 70 and he has a gut. I lose if he is still as skinny as ever. There is money on the line, so every time I see him, I offer him as much junk food as I can. It still hasn't made a dent in that belly of his. Oh well.

Happy Halloween!

2010-10-30T07:00:00.001-07:00

Service

2010-10-28T12:02:00.000-07:00

I wish I could share my story in it's entirity, but that would be totoally innapropriate. I just want to say that service is more important than any of us have any grasp of.

I was feeling down on myself yesterday, for what I knew to be very selfish reasons. At one point during the day I did something that needed to be done. What I didn't realize is that my actions were an act of service for more than one person. The thanks and gratitude I received lifted my spirits more than anything else in the world could have. Moral of the story? Serving others makes you happy.

Christ's life was one of service. I hope that I can make my life more like his.

BOO!

2010-10-27T14:52:00.000-07:00

Did he scare you?

I love this season for so many reasons! One of them is the infinite amount of fun, festive treats I could bake! Unfortunately, my sugar supply is feeling low, so I haven't made as many fun treats as I would have liked to this October. I do have one more up my sleeve, so stay tuned.

If you're curious about my little ghosts, they are cooked meringue. (It took 2 1/2 hours to slow cook these babies!) After their stint in the sauna, I dipped them in chocolate and toasted coconut. Despite the long time to cook, they were super easy. Fool proof. And, my kids love them! Too bad I didn't make them for the kids. :) Oh well.

Making an Effort

2010-10-26T18:03:00.000-07:00

It always makes me sad when I don't have somebodies blog to read. It seems to me that all of my friends are on similar blogging schedules, so I have 5 new updates to read one day, and then nothing for a week. Maybe I'm just too nosey, but I really do love reading people's blogs. So, I can't very well be sad when I haven't blogged lately, can I? I have no new funny stories to share, but I do have cute pictures of my kids!

We spend a lot of Saturdays at my mom's house, and all of these were taken there, two weeks ago.
Lizzy and Logan always get ice cream at Grandma's house. And apparently spaghetti sauce stains too.

Logan took this picture of me. I guess that's what I look like from his perspective.

I took this while balancing precariously on the swing and Lizzy on my lap. I've been looking at baby pictures of myself lately, and shockingly enough, my nose used to look like Lizzy's! I guess I've turned into more of a witch since then.

Always a must activity at Grandma's house: reading books. This particular book is of the prophets. Logan likes naming all the different prophets. James wants Logan to memorize the presidents of the United States next.

My cute angel!

Just kickin' it on the swings.

To my knowledge, this is the first time Logan has ever climbed a tree, so I had to document it!

Grandma is giving Logan a ride on the swings. I'm quite certain this wasn't comfortable for her. She just loves Logan that much.

Hopefully I'll have better anecdotes for you in the near future. In the mean time, settle with this. :)

p.s These picture are really making me miss the warm weather.

End in Sight

2010-10-13T14:51:00.000-07:00

Our prophets have been counseling for a long time to get our food storage in order. We'll be the first to admit that we've been slow to get started. But, this year is different for us. We had already decided that we wanted to spend our Christmas money (we have generous parents) on food storage. Not even a month later, James' mom gave each of her kids their Christmas early. Money to spend ONLY on food storage. She even made little notebooks for each of our families that says how much we need to buy of everything. Very nice. We've taken inventory on everything we have, and we're proud to have a whole year on some things, 6 months on many things, and only 3 months on just a few things.
Logan is showing off all the food we bought with our Christmas money.

All of this food storage talk got me thinking one night. I told James that while the thought of Christs' return to the earth is very exciting, quite frankly, I'm scared to have to live through all of the turmoil that has been prophesied. Through the course of our discussion, we decided that, while James would rather be here for the second coming, he'll be in heaven with me when the time comes if that's what I would prefer. But, we still don't want to miss the big event! So, I'll be either one of the trumpet playing angels, or one of the singing ones. (I still can't decide.) And James will be charging forward, valiantly (and oh so handsomely) with sword in one hand, and the title of liberty in the other hand.

Tell me, do all married couples have discussions like this?

Let Them Eat Cake

2010-09-30T15:12:00.000-07:00

'Nuff said.

Our House

2010-09-24T06:55:00.000-07:00

I have a hard time falling asleep almost every single night, because I can't seem to turn my brain off. Last night my brain was obsessing about our house and how much work we've put into it to make it ours. Of course I've put these pictures in backwards, but you can deal with it, because it's my blog, and I screwed up. :) The latest project we finished was our garden.
This is only a partial view of this section of our yard. When we bought the house, this was all grass, but it didn't have a sprinkler system in it, and I figured it would serve it's purpose better as our garden. We dug up all the grass the first year we lived here and planted our garden in that horrible dirt. We've since put in all this bark and the raised beds. James also added an ingenious sprinkler system to that side of our yard.

Before the garden was the extra room in our house! When we bought the house, it was only a three bedroom house. It become increasingly clear to us that we are going to be in this house a long time, so James became more and more obsessed with the idea that he could build an extra bedroom, from nothing, above our living room. I'm so glad he did because we love our play room with the huge walk in closet!

About a year before we built the room, we remodeled our entertainment center unit thingy. This is the "after" shot.

This is the before.

A nice improvement, don't you think?

Putting the tile in our house was one of our very first projects. Oddly enough, this is the one that James was the most scared of. There was carpet under our dinner table, and that just did not jive with me. We ripped out all the linoleum in the house, and part of the carpet, and put in this tile.

Aside from these obvious projects, we also replaced the carpet in the whole house, put a ladder up into our attic and put down boards to walk on and store all of our "junk", we put hardware on all of our cabinets, and we painted, of course.

Of course, painting this whole wall was later a waste since this is where the new room went. But it was our first painting project in the house, and we were proud of it.

You can tell that we've put a lot of energy into making our house, OUR house. We've really enjoyed all of it. I often joke about hating our house because it's a measly 1500 square feet, we owe about $40,000 more on it than we bought it for (due to the tanking economy, not our own stupidity(though that is arguable)) and we hate the HOA that is tied in with living here. But, I got a wake up call a couple of days ago.

James and I are forging forward into an investment venture. It involved meeting with a financial guru, of sorts, to give us some advice on how to get started. He laid out two different plans for us and the first one involved us renting out our house. I've always thought that I would like to move into a bigger house, with no HOA, but when he suggested that we move, I immediately knew this was not an option. I love our house and cannot foresee any immediate plans to move out of it. I think we'll make it work for us as long as we possibly can.

Bake Sale!

2010-09-16T16:01:00.000-07:00

There is a charity yard and bake sale happening in my neighboring neighborhood on Saturday. I heard the words "bake sale" and my brain took off, thinking of all the wonderful things I could bake! I also had to try and figure out what I should bake that would make the most money. This is to help someone out, after all. :) I hope I made the right choices. Today I made these cupcake pops!

I told James to take my picture with all of my hard work. We have hardly any pictures off me, and my argument was that when I die young, the kids won't have any pictures of me to look at and remember me by. My argument didn't work, because he didn't pick up the camera. I had to take this picture myself. I guess that makes me full of myself. Oh well.

I also baked 3 red velvet cakes on Monday. They are in the freezer for now, and actually only 2 of them will make it to the bake sale. I gave the other one to James' boss. That's a whole other story, but I'll just say that his boss deserves more than a measly cake.

Tomorrow I will bake miniature lemon cupcakes. Let me assure you that these are little bites of heaven. I was going to bake more, but I was surprised to see how many people signed up to bake stuff, so I eliminated the pumpkin rolls and caramels from my list. I'm sure James is grateful. He usually cleans up after me in the kitchen, after all.

I hope I've caught some of your taste buds attention and maybe I'll see some of you at the yard/bake sale on Saturday! If you want to come and you don't know where it is, shoot me an email and I'll fill you in.

Trying It Out

2010-09-15T16:03:00.000-07:00

I'm stealing an idea from my good friend. She recently posted on her blog a list of her 10 favorite things in that moment. So, when the mood strikes me, I may do this randomly, and, hopefully, my lists will differ. We'll see. :) Oh, and there is no order to this. Just what comes to mind.

1. My children laughing. James knows I enjoy this so he recorded them laughing and put it as my ring tone.
2. Cream cheese brownies. It's actually ridiculous that I would limit this to just cream cheese brownies, but in order to keep this list more interesting, I'll limit the baked goods to this one item.
3. House. I'm in the middle of season 4 and I'm addicted to it.
4. Seeing James the first second he gets home from work. Having him home brings a sense of completeness to the day.
5. McDonald's double cheeseburgers. I've been in love with the 5th day James and I were married.
6.Great friends and family members who do favors for me because they love me. They are indispensable and I don't know what I've done to earn those great relationships.
7.My bed. I LOVE our bed. It's big, it's comfortable, and it welcomes me each night with it's loving, metaphorical, arms. I'm not sure why we aren't allowed to sleep for 12 hours each night. Oh well.
8. Going out to eat, because I really don't enjoy cooking dinner. I'll make cake or cookies at the drop of a hat, but dinner is not something I enjoy making.
9. A clean house. Because, you know, that only lasts for about 5 seconds, so I enjoy it while I can.
10. Toes. I really love looking at and playing with Logan and Lizzy's toes. I know most people can't stand feet, but I'm a foot person. I guess.

I Love You

2010-09-13T09:10:00.000-07:00

She poops every day and makes me change it, she makes me feed her 10 times a day, I wipe her snotty nose every five minutes, she makes messes with everything she touches, she screams every time she wants something, somebody was mean to her, and just because she feels like it. She can do all of these things every day if she wants to and I won't care...too much.

Brave Kid, Scared Kid

2010-08-26T17:04:00.000-07:00

You can figure out which one is which on your own.

The Prophets

2010-08-24T18:56:00.000-07:00

Logan knows his prophets. Don't believe me?

Maybe it's not really so cool, but we think it is.

The Dreaded Saturday

2010-08-21T09:44:00.000-07:00

Cute kid, huh? That's lotion all over her. She likes to eat it. I try not to let her, but sometimes, she's just really sneaky.

I don't like Saturdays. Not at all. James has to work on Saturdays. It should be just like any other day he goes to work, but it feels different somehow. I know that all of my friends are off playing with their families and I'm stuck at home alone with the kids. Even this isn't really different than most days, but it's the idea of knowing that if I wanted to do something with somebody else, I probably couldn't. Also, James doesn't have any form of a Saturday at all. For the last 5-6 months he's been working required over time. That means his only day off is Sunday, and even then he's had to work on a few of them in the last 5 months. At least Sunday is a day of rest. Ha!

You may be wondering, at this point, why I'm sharing all this. It's because today is a Saturday and I'm bored at home. I've already vacuumed the whole house and washed the walls and base boards and read stories to the kids. Now I'm just tired and bored. :) So, because of my boredom, I decided to look up the pictures I haven't shared with you yet. Here they are!

We went to Rupert a few weeks ago for our own mini Mickelsen Family reunion. I didn't take many pictures this time. Actually, I just took one picture. This one!

This is James with his brother Matt. We were out on the boat as much as time with family and the weather allowed. It was a fun visit!

These next two pictures are of Logan and his friend Coleman. The other day when they were playing, Coleman told Logan that they should climb on these shelves and go to sleep. I thought it made a cute photo op. I especially liked the Coleman used Lizzy's baby doll as a pillow. I guess he knows what they're good for.

Then they had to switch places. Notice how they're dressed alike? That happens more often than not, coincidentally. In fact they have a lot of the same clothes. His mom and I must shop at the same stores!

Lastly, a cute picture of Lizzy. See the big bruise on her head? I have no idea how she got it. In fact, I didn't even notice it until her bath that night. She normally sports some pretty cute bangs, so they were covering up the bruise until I washed her hair. Poor thing.

I guess I'll go eat lunch now. :)

Therapy...

2010-08-12T12:42:00.000-07:00

for me is talking about things till I'm beating a dead horse. James, of course, has never complained, but I know that's how I handle things and he tolerates it well enough. My shock with that, is that he talks about NOTHING! Yet, here I am, willing to talk about the same thing for about 5 days straight, analyzing every angle, making sure I've missed no thought. I've tried really hard not to "over talk" our recent situation, but to help ensure that I don't, I thought I would torture all of my avid readers with it. That thought makes me smile, literally. Stop reading if you don't want to be bored to death.

To really make this therapeutic, I have to go back 5 years ago, to when James and I first started trying to get pregnant. We'd been married for a couple of years, and the pregnancy bug was biting hard. I had resisted it for as long as I could so that I could safely finish getting my bachelors degree without being weighed down with the responsibility of a child. I'd seen too many women give in to their natural need to take care of their kids and drop out of school. I needed both things in my life, so I made the sacrifice. It was totally a personal decision, I don't look down on anybody who made the opposite decision I did. Because, it's personal.

The time had come to get pregnant. I was thrilled to see a positive test after the first month of trying. I was not so thrilled when only 1 week later I miscarried that baby. Not even two months later I got another positive read on a pregnancy test. 2 weeks later came the bitter disappointment. I went to the doctor (finally) for some testing. The doctor declared that there seemed to be nothing wrong with me and chances were the next pregnancy would stick. And stick it did! The very next month I was pregnant for the third time.

What follows was a mom (me) trying to figure out the complexities of a baby. It was difficult, but living with my mom and dad sure made things easier. My mom would take Logan after his morning feeding so that I could get another hour of sleep. Sometimes I'd come upstairs to see my mom and dad both looking and fussing over Logan. My dad was fond of calling him "fat boy" because he had a very chunky face. Good memories. However, taking care of a baby was still a hard transition for me and when it came time to get pregnant again I was very apprehensive, but I knew I should do it. There was no point in putting off more kids simply because I was scared. Once again, we got pregnant the first month we tried. I wish I could say I was excited, but really, I was just really scared.

Lizzy was born and I realized something. I had grown up. This time around, I didn't need help! I knew what to do and it came easily to me. Sure, there were sleepless nights and I was definitely frazzled by that, but a good husband is priceless in those situations. I felt very comfortable in my roll as a mother, and before Lizzy was even 9 months old I was itching to get pregnant again. Somehow I managed to resist until there would be at least 2 years between Lizzy and the new baby.

Fast forward to 3-4 months ago. We tried to get pregnant again. I wish I knew for sure if I had gotten pregnant that month, but I have no test to show for it, just the firm knowledge that I was a solid three days late. I'm a 28 day kind of gal, so on the third late day I took a test. It showed up negative. I was absolutely stunned and unbelieving. If only I had waited another hour, because that's all it took to be sure I was not pregnant.

Fast forward one more month, I'm pregnant, for sure! I let James be the one to read the test before I could. That made him happy to know I was pregnant before I did. :) This pregnancy was great. I hardly felt sick at all, except for moments in the evening where if you looked at me wrong I was sure I might throw up in your face, but nothing extreme. ;) I finally made my doctor's appointment, that for whatever reason I had really procrastinated in doing. I was surprised that day to be sitting in his office and realized how excited I was to finally see my baby. I tried not to let it disappoint me when the doctor couldn't find the heart beat, and was really shocked at my feelings of peace and calm when the ultra sound showed that the baby was only measuring at 8 weeks, with no heart beat, when I thought I was 10 weeks. I'd had no spotting to warn me of this news, but I still felt calm and assured that everything was fine and that this wasn't a big deal. I called James before I left to tell him the news. He was sincerely disappointed and I felt like I was "calming" him down. There wasn't much to calm however. I joke with him that his heart is dead because he seems to never show any emotion.

I went back to my Mom's house to pick up my kids, feeling calm as could be. I surprised myself a bit when I couldn't get the words out to her with out crying a little bit.

I had friends and sisters call me as soon as they heard the news. They all tried to figure out why I didn't seem too sad. The best description I can give is that I knew it could happen all over again. I'm mostly just disappointed that I was sick for no reason, that it's going to take that much longer until I have my baby, I have to go through the stupid D and C procedure, I have to do the whole planning and waiting thing to get pregnant again....etc. Those are all pretty heartless reasons, but there they are anyway.

I was very apprehensive last night and this morning in anticipation of my procedure. I was scared of all the pain, but on some level of knowing my body, I knew that the pain would be minimal. James has determined that my body has a high pain tolerance; it's my mind that has a low pain tolerance. Any time I know a needle is coming near me I start acting like a crazy person, literally. James made a joke to the nurses that I was already drugged up. They took it seriously enough that they asked if I really was. After putting the IV in, with out any drugs going through it, I commented on how funny I felt. They quickly bombarded me with an onslaught of questions, what's my name, spell it, when is your birthday, and so on. Like I said, I'm a crazy person. (I'm happy to report that I answered all their questions correctly!) The procedure when with out a hitch and the doctor reported that my bleeding will be minimal because it looked as though the baby was nearly ready to pass on it's own.

In the recovery room I broke down in tears. James asked me what I was feeling and thinking. Strangely enough I had no answer for him. I had no idea where the tears were coming from. I wasn't feeling sad, or hurt or anything. I'm thinking they were just a side affect of coming out of the anesthesia.

I'm home now. I'm trying to evaluate my thoughts and feelings now. I don't think they've changed too much, although I've been warned that they might. Again, my biggest frustration is that I have to go through it all again. Not the D and C, but the planning, trying to get pregnant, waiting to find out, feeling sick, and the anticipation of losing it. My mom had 4 miscarriages and 8 kids. I'm hoping that I've met my quota of 4 miscarriages, although I doubt I'll have the 8 kids. (Sorry mom!) But let's be real. This is my main apprehension. What if there is something wrong with my body? What if I get pregnant easily, but have a hard time staying pregnant? It's a real concern for me for more than one reason. I'm shocked by the amount of women I know who struggle to get pregnant. Some of them already have 2-3 kids, but despite their best efforts, they just can't get/stay pregnant again. It's heart breaking for them, and I have no doubt that I won't handle it well if that's the case for me. I'm meant to have more children, I feel that in my heart, so that's what keeps me calm.

My condolences to all of you who have gone through the same struggle, or worse, have never had the joy of carrying a baby. James and I have even discussed the option of my being a surrogate mother for other women once I'm done having my own children. I (deeply) want to bless the lives of other women with being able to have a child that is them and their husband's. I only hope that this can still be an option for me in the years to come. I'm sure it will, but I'm a girl and a pessimist, so let me fret over it, ok?

Thanks for letting me vent. Kudos to those who made it through all of this.

Oh, one more thing, I've been instructed to take an aspirin every day of my first trimester when I get pregnant again. I know that there have been a lot of studies trying to show if this helps women not miscarry or not. I guess the tests have proven positive! Thanks to all the women who volunteered their bodies in those tests. Yes, that means you Jocelyn. :) Thank you!

Nothing to Share

2010-07-31T14:11:00.000-07:00

Or so it feels. My mom has bugged me a few times that I don't update my blog enough, but really, these are the only pictures I've taken in the last month, and there's not much to them. I don't have any funny stories or crazy happenings, so this is what you get!
The kids found the goggles, and now they live in the toy basket. (The goggles, not the kids.)

Logan and Lizzy have a bad habit of taking the gas cap off the lawn mower and filling the tank up with grass, mulch, water, and other things. Despite the multiple beatings they receive, they keep doing it, so this is a picture of one of the many times James has had to fix the lawn mower. I thought it was a cute picture because Logan's got the tools in his hands too and thinks he is actually being helpful.

We had friends over for dinner and games a week ago. I made the mistake of leaving the games out overnight. The next morning, while I was taking my shower, this is what ensued. Rumikub tiles, a deck of Skip-Bo cards, and a deck of regular playing cards, all over the floor!

Lizzy has started this new thing where she "falls" off the bottom stair. As I was putting the blog post together Logan started jumping down the stairs and it occurred to me that Lizzy is probably just imitating him, but she's not coordinated enough to jump yet.

Lastly, I have to include this video because it sums up why I love James. He's a goof. I'm a little more serious, so he brings good balance to my life. He's embarrassed about this video, though I can't figure out why!

I have one more video to share, but I'll save it for another post. :)

Feeling Tired

2010-07-29T15:00:00.001-07:00

...because, if you'll notice my new widget, I'm pregnant! James and I are excited to welcome baby number 3 in our home some time around March 6th. For those of you trying to do the math, that means I'm a little over 8 weeks along. Did you know that your chances of miscarriage decrease to only 5% when you're 8 weeks, and down to 1% when at 12 weeks? That's exciting!

Anyway, my morning sickness has been practically non-existent, which is GREAT and unexpected, but I have been feeling the fatigue that usually accompanies pregnancy.

We originally decided that we would keep the sex of this baby a surprise, however, that has gone out the window. James so badly wants a boy, but I'm 99% sure that we have a girl on the way. For James' sake, I hope I am wrong. Anyway, now we have to find out what we're having as soon as possible. Every week James asks me how much longer until we can get that ultra-sound. Silly boy.

Well, that's the end of our exciting news. Hope you enjoyed it!

4th of July Weekend

2010-07-06T19:36:00.000-07:00

We spent our 4th of July weekend in Rupert, Idaho, where James grew up. These were the kind of fireworks we enjoyed, the illegal kind.
Logan sat snuggled up with his Grandma Idaho the whole time.

The rest of the pictures highlight some of Logan's favorite activities, while visiting the farm, where James grew up. Here, Logan is eagerly climbing into the tractor.

The kids are prepared for a fun ride.
Lizzy liked riding the motorcycle.

Logan really liked the four wheeler, and in this picture he is riding with his cousin Morgan.

James was shocked when I told him I had never driven a tractor before. I've spent many hours riding in one with him while he drove them, but I never did any actual driving. James quickly remedied that problem. So, if you can't tell, that's me driving it.

This was Logan's turn on the motorcycle. He wasn't so thrilled with it.

It was hard to reach the handle bars with both kids in front of me, but the kids had fun.

And this last picture pretty much highlights our drive home.

We had a lot of fun. I didn't even get any pictures from when we went on the boat and went tubing. That was A LOT of fun! We'll be going back in August, so maybe I'll remember to take pictures, while on the boat, next time.

The Latest

2010-06-21T11:26:00.000-07:00

These are my two latest cakes. The first was for Ellie, an adorable little 6 year old who is obssessed with Phantom of the Opera.
This one was for Logan who is in love with Mater. I had fun experimenting with my airbrush again, but the paint job still wasn't great. That was mostly due to James washing his hands and flinging the water off of them and all over Mater. Water has some interesting effects on painted fondant.

Anyway, just thought I would share since this is what I get the most joy and frustration from.

Phantom Cake

2010-06-03T07:52:00.001-07:00

I really like to decorate cakes. I have never felt very creative, but decorating cakes makes me really stretch that brain muscle. The only draw back to it is that I don't pay very much attention to my kids when I'm in the throws of a cake. Things like this can ensue.
Lizzy really likes the trash can. On this particular day she found, what I thought, was an empty box of cornstarch. I guess it wasn't as empty as I had thought. :)

Here's a picture of what I've been working on.

The mask and rose are both made out of gum paste. The above is not the finished product. I still had to trim the mask a bit, and then I painted them both with shiny paint. (I used my airbrush!) The picture below is the finished product.

Aren't they shiny and pretty? Anyway, the cake is for this Saturday. I still have to figure out the placement of these two objects on the top of the cake. I think that is going to be more challenging than you or I think. Do I leave the mask laying down, or prop it up like in this picture? If I prop it up, how would I do that in a non-conspicuous way? Do you see my dilemma? I'll get it figured out. Anyway, I just had so much fun with these that I had to share them right away! I hope you like them.

What About....LIZZY

2010-05-28T11:14:00.000-07:00

Are you familiar with the movie What About Bob? Remember the part where Bob is eating dinner with his therapist and family? Bob can't stop "mmmming" about the dinner. It is meant to be funny because nobody "mmmms" while eating their food. Right?

Lizzy loves food. Apparently she's like Bob and the urge to "mmmm" is too overpowering to resist.

To Be a Kid

2010-05-24T13:23:00.001-07:00

I kind of miss the days that my legs looked like this. Ahhh...to be a kid.

7 Years!

2010-05-24T13:18:00.001-07:00

Happy Anniversary to my hot hubby, James! This is year 7 for us and there is no end in sight, thank goodness. :)

I've been told that we have a unique engagement story, so I thought that I would share it with anybody who may read this. Obviously some details become fuzzy over time, but I will do my best to share as accurate a story as possible.The year was 2002 and I was fresh out of high school. James had been home from his mission for about a year and a half. It was the first day of the college semester (my first day of college period) and James had a friend visiting him. His friend, Clint, strongly encouraged James to muster up some courage and go with him, Clint, to meet some of the girls in James' ward. James had almost zero interest in girls or marriage but came off of his summer vacation with a goal to overcome that. After all, he was almost 22, practically an old man, and he knew it was time to start thinking about marriage. Clint and James knocked on our neighbor's door. A girl answered and politely shrugged them off. They knocked on our door next. I answered and said: "Hi. (hesitantly) ....and, you are?" (I assumed they were there because they knew one of my roommates). James was the one who answered, "In your ward"! Now, to be perfectly honest, I thought it was a lame answer and it kind of put me off. Regardless, I invited them in and they stayed and chatted for about an hour.I didn't think much about this first encounter, but James returned the next day with one of his roommates. He came again the day after that with another roommate, and the day after that with another roommate. Pretty soon he was coming nearly every day. He made so many appearances that I was convinced he liked my roommate, Brittney. As a result, I didn't spend much time talking to James because I didn't think he was there for me. If you ask him, he'll say he kept coming over because he thought we were a fun bunch of girls, but that was it.A couple of months went by and my roommate Brittney began to date James' roommate Casey. Here is where the story gets odd and confusing so just go with it. During many late night conversations in both of our apartments, I was told by Brittney that Casey told her that James was interested in me. James was told by Casey that Brittney told him that I had told her that I was interested in James. James and I have compared our stories and can't figure out why Casey and Brittney said those things because James and I had never been interested in each other at all. Thankfully some of this miscommunication did happen because being told that James was interested in me made me consider him as a viable option as a boyfriend. The affect of James being told that I liked him made him convinced that he needed to make me be his girlfriend. No joke. He started coming over and telling me that I needed to stop wasting my time with another guy I was kind of seeing at the time and be James' girlfriend. I wanted to date James but I had just started committing time to this other guy, Joel, and didn't feel like I could just break it off for James. I barely knew James! Every time he had come over, he only spent time with my roommates Brittney and Ashley.Over the period of one week James came over every day and tried to talk me into breaking things off with Joel because James wanted me to be his girlfriend. (I'm not kidding, those were his words. Not "date" but "boyfriend/girlfriend".) I was becoming so confused and overwhelmed and didn't know what to do.It was the last day of the week, Sunday, and James was at my apartment, once again trying to convince me to be his girlfriend. We were having a debate of what decision I needed to make when my roommate/bestest friend in the world, Carlee walked through the room. In passing she said to James: "Just propose to her. She'll say yes and have to break up with Joel". James looked at me and asked if that was true. I considered it for a second before saying, "yes". Case closed. We went to ward prayer that night and I told Joel it was over. Three days later James went to the temple to pray about me and came back to my apartment so we could talk things over some more. (We still hadn't been on a single date yet.) James told me that he would like to date me and he felt good about that decision. My response was, "Well sure, dating would be good. But the way I look at it is this: If we date, we will get engaged, and of coursed married". James hesitantly agreed that this sounded accurate to him. That was all I needed to hear. From that moment on I was telling people that we were engaged. That frightened him a bit (I've since learned) but he is such a shy guy that he couldn't tell me that he didn't really believe we were engaged. But, since he never said anything, we were engaged! He gave me my ring two months later and we were married 4 months after that.
It has been so much fun to be married to James and I am grateful to Brittney and Casey for doing whatever they did that made James and me interested in one another. I am grateful to James for having a back bone to tell me to break up with Joel, but no back bone when it came to telling me that he didn't really know if he wanted to marry me. Sometimes I fear that he married me simply because he didn't have the heart to tell me that it wasn't what he really wanted.

Regardless of how we got engaged, it's been an awesome 7 years and I am completely psyched to see how the next 7 turn out.

The Last Couple of Days

2010-05-01T07:56:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was James' and my 7th wedding anniversary. We didn't really celebrate it though. I woke up early that morning and finished working on a wedding cake for my friends brother. After I finished it and got it delivered, James took me to an oral surgeon so I could have my wisdom teeth taken out.
This is me last night (Friday the 30th). Nothing like being drugged up, freshly showered, reading a book, and cuddling up with a bag of frozen corn and okra.

Here is the wedding cake. I finished the board off by putting a black ribbon around it. The couple also put a silver "J" on top.

We took this video of Lizzy that same day. James went in her room to get her up for the morning. She was all smiles, but completely covered in throw up!

It is now Saturday morning and 24 hours after my surgery. No swelling yet. Also, I'm only taking Ibuprofen to manage the pain. I'm not in that much pain, yet, and the Lortab just made me feel woozy and dizzy. Anyway, it was a fun anniversary in it's own way. Stay tuned for a post that is more anniversary related.

2010-04-07T13:00:00.000-07:00

I normally wouldn't waste all of your precious time with a post about my birthday, but I really had such a great day, that I wanted to share it with you!

My day started at 7:30 AM when I noticed a pink post it note on the bathroom mirror. James had left for work an hour earlier, so I knew it had to be his doing. The post it declared that I was now on a treasure hunt for my birthday present. There were 9 different stops along the hunt, each containing a clue and part of my present. I will admit that one of the clues had me stumped for a good 10 minutes. Anyway, my gift was a new airbrush that I (am scared to death of because I have no clue how to use it) get to learn how to use to decorate cakes with! I've been wanting one for some time but due to my nearly nonexistent cake decorating know-how, I have been hesitant to spend the money and buy one.

The next great part of my day was when James got home from work extraordinarily early; around noon. That was followed closely by my good friend, Mary, coming over to share some lunch with me. She also brought me a fun candy bar that she found from World Market. Speaking of candy, my friend Jocelyn also brought me a candy bar, one of her favorites, a Utah's Mint Truffle bar. I think that's what it's called. Doesn't matter, it was mmm mmmm good!

James did a good job of making sure I didn't take care of the kids too much during the day.

That night, my mom came over so that James could take me on a mysterious date. I had no idea what we were going to do. As we were driving to destination, "unknown", he handed me the phone and a phone number. He told me to call it and figure the rest out from there. I called and the person answered the phone in such a garbledy gook way that I panicked and hung up. James clarified for me that I had called The Golden Phoenix, my favorite Chinese food restaurant. I called them back and ordered some food for us. We picked up our food and then James found a random street to park on and ordered me into the back seat of our van. (Don't get any ideas!)
He had brought my favorite movie, Pride and Prejudice, to watch while we ate our dinner. It's the five hour version movie, so obviously we didn't watch the whole thing. After a while, we hopped back into the front seats and drove to the Clark Planetarium. We watched one of their light shows put to music.

As we were walking out of the show, I asked James if he had baked me a birthday cake. He sidestepped the question nicely and walked me to the car. He drove to the Olive Garden and I immediately knew what my "birthday cake" was. I love one of their desserts and James had planned to run in and buy me a piece. Unfortunately, they were ALL OUT! James came back to the car disheartened. I told him that I had always wanted to try the chocolate cake they have at P.F Changs, so we drove there. I ran in to order it. I waited and waited and waited some more for them to bring it out to me. After waiting a little bit longer I asked the girl what was up. She did some investigating before they came out with the cake. Because I waited for so long (really, it was only about 15 minutes) they gave it to me for FREE!

We drove home, put a candle in the cake and my mom and James sang happy birthday to me. My mom gave me a one pound box of See's chocolates before she left for the night. (Can you tell that people know I love chocolate/candy/cake/sugar?)

That piece of cake was massive!

All of that fun was coupled with phone calls from loved ones. I received my first birthday phone call at 12:08 AM from my sister Andrea. I may have sounded a bit put off when I spoke with her, but in my defence, I had been asleep for almost 2 hours. I really did appreciate her fun antics and desire to be the first one to wish me a happy birthday, but maybe next year she will wait until 8:00AM.

I know a lot of people are sad with each birthday that makes them a year older, but I really have nothing to be sad about. I've done a lot of fun and good things the last 26 years. I've probably had a fuller life than most 26 year olds. I may not be as cheerful about turning 30, but at this point I don't see what there is to be afraid of. I'm excited to see what all I can accomplish in the next 4 years.

Thank you to everybody who made my day special. I had a genuinely great day.

Cute Videos

2010-03-26T09:12:00.001-07:00

Enjoy watching my cute kids, because I sure do!

Wide Awake

2010-03-23T14:27:00.001-07:00

Thankfully it isn't 2 AM in the morning as I write this post. I'm sure all of you are the grateful ones. :) As I reread what I wrote in the last post, it became clear to me why I need my sleep.

It has been an interesting couple of weeks. Nothing in particular has happened that I want to discuss, but I just want to say a few words about the thoughts that have been floating through my mind as of late.

First of all, I have a wonderful husband. I am often amazed that I want to see and talk to him EVERY day. I can't say that about any of my other friends or family members. It is very obvious to me how much of an effect your spouse can have on the type of person you are and become each day. I am not a perfect person, by any means, but I am a better person today than I was 7 years ago, and I know that James deserves a lot of those thanks.

Second, I love this country. I may be displeased with some of the decisions that have been made lately, but I am thrilled that they could happen. If I lived elsewhere I couldn't be this mad, the government just wouldn't allow it. (I kid of course.) There is no doubt in my mind that the founding fathers were led by the inspiration of our Heavenly Father. The wonderful freedom's that we enjoy by living in this country are all part of The Plan.

Lastly, I love my Heavenly Father, and my Savior, Jesus Christ. I know that I could not enjoy every ounce of happiness in my life if it weren't for the Atonement and the love that my father in heaven has for me. I don't think that this life is meant to be easy, nor is it meant to be easy to have and keep a testimony. But I am so grateful that I do have one and it is very precious to me. I will do all that I am capable of to keep it strong and thriving. Speaking of which, we'd better start doing our family home evenings more faithfully............got to go!

Can't Sleep

2010-03-19T23:08:00.000-07:00

Ever since Lizzy was born I've had trouble falling asleep. I just can't seem to shut my brain off. Tonight (Friday night) is one of those nights but the problem is compounded with the fact that I took a nap earlier today. I knew better, but I was SO tired! I'm paying for it now and so are all of you who read this. I have nothing better to do at 12:10 AM than to write a blog post about how I can't sleep.

So....what random ramblings can I regale you all with? Lets see; an interesting observance is that Lizzy must be a light sleeper. She keeps making noise in her crib, but I'm usually asleep at this hour, so I'm not aware of it.

I need more material. I can't come up with anything to share. How about some random trivia about me? Ok.

In high school and the early years of our marriage, I would religiously paint my nails once a week. Now it's about once a month. But I do own a lot of nail polish. I counted over 20 bottles the other day. I would also like to point out that I go through it regularly and throw away bottles that I haven't used in the last year or so.

Nobody is happy with how their body looks, right? There is always something they would change about it. Well, I wouldn't change a thing about my feet. I've always felt that I got lucky in the feet looks department. I'm sure they're nothing great, but I've always thought about going into foot modeling if I needed the extra money.

I used to color my hair at least once a month. I would get so bored with how it looked, and that was the quickest way to change it. Now I can't remember the last time I had it colored. I would still love to have it colored on a regular basis, but our bank account just doesn't agree with me.

I like to bake. I know that this is common knowledge, but I want to point out that even though I like to bake, that does not mean that I make the best of anything. It's quite the contrary actually. I feel like everything I make is just mediocre, but I just enjoy the process. I'm still on the search for the perfect cake recipes. I haven't found them yet. In fact, I've had one lady order three different birthday cakes from me, all white cake. I used a different recipe every time! I should have asked her which one she liked the best.

I wish I was really good at just one thing. Something that nobody else that I knew was better than me at it. I like to sing, but my sister-in-law can out sing me. I like to play the piano, but almost all of my siblings can play better than me. I wish I was a good writer, but I just fail miserably at that and could name a million people that I know who are better than me at that. I wish I was a fantastic cake decorator. Unfortunately I just do the best job I can to copy a cake that I find a picture of.

Things on my wish list: lasik surgery, new living room furniture, all the cake decorating supplies I've ever needed/wanted, a second car, to go on a cruise (this is really number one on my wish list), a house that people didn't mistake for a town house or an apartment, more children, a bigger kitchen, ummm......maybe that's it.

I really should try and go to bed now. I just hate laying in bed and flopping around for two hours until I'm finally blessed with the sweet release of sleep. I'll just end with one more thought.

I've felt very blessed these last few weeks. There has been no particular reason for it. Mostly I think it has come from spending time with friends and feeling like I matter to someone. In my personal prayers last night I thanked my Heavenly Father for these good feelings I've been having. I know that they don't last forever, and in fact, they just come in waves. I asked Him to help me remember and keep these happy thoughts close to my heart when the inevitable happens, and I have a bad day or week or month. Thank you to everybody who makes my life the happy one that it is!

Books + Kiwi = Love

2010-03-11T08:13:00.000-08:00

I stayed up until midnight last night reading a good book. To those of you who say you don't have time to read, just tell me the truth. You don't enjoy reading so you don't make the time for it. I'll bet you have time that I don't have to scrap book or some other talent that I don't have. It's all about what you enjoy to do. I enjoy reading, but I will say that I don't seem to find as much time for it as I would like. But, last night, I found the time. Unfortunately it was during my sleeping hours, but such is life. So, if you want a good book to read (because you have time for such things) I recommend The Kitchen God's Wife by Amy Tan.

On another note; Lizzy loves kiwi. Logan won't try it. I cut the kiwi up last night knowing I shouldn't even bother trying to offer it to Logan. I started feeding it to Lizzy and told Logan right away that he couldn't have any of it because it was all for Lizzy. I kept saying things like that over and over to him until he was begging me for a bite of the kiwi. Yay! My plan worked! What Logan should have said next was, "JUST KIDDING"! As soon as I offered him a bite, he refused it. He's a punk. Oh well. Lizzy ate the whole kiwi. Despite the look on her face after she took a bite, let me assure you that I haven't seen her this excited to eat something in a long time. Enjoy the cute video!

After she took the fork out of my hand, she insisted on spearing the remaining pieces with the fork herself.

Regrets

2010-03-04T07:21:00.000-08:00

But not my regrets! Oh no. I'm afraid it's our good friends, the Egberts, who may be having regrets. About being our friends.

James and Rob met each other while passing the sacrament. James then insisted that we have the Egbert's over for dinner. I wasn't thrilled with the idea because I didn't know Rob or Jocelyn. Turns out, Jocelyn didn't want to come over for dinner either because she didn't know me or James. But, we both sucked it up and we had dinner together. I can honestly say that that was a great night. We laughed and laughed and I think we both knew it was an instant friendship. Since then, we have been to Park City together, celebrated the fourth of July together, and spent countless Sunday evenings with one another playing games and eating brownies. They bring the games, I make the brownies.

Rob and Jocelyn have been our back up plan, our home remodel helpers, and our babysitters to go to the temple, the reason we have wills, our tax people, and who knows what else. When we need help, we call the Egbert's, and they ALWAYS answer! I'm afraid they now regret our friendship because I fear that the giving in this relationship is a little one sided. They have helped us out countless times and rarely ask for help in return! Here is one example.

Last night I had to do some last minute shopping. I decided to stop by Sonic first to get an, oh so delicious, cream pie shake. When I tried to start the car to leave, you guessed it, it wouldn't start. I knew what the problem was immediately, because it was something I had asked James to fix for me a few days earlier and he never got around to it. One of the posts on the battery was covered in corrosion. I did what I could do fix the problem myself, but with no luck. I called James to rescue me, but we only own one car and I was in it. Not to mention the problem of our kids being at home and in bed.

The Egbert's to the rescue!

James called Rob who was on his way home from work and school. Rob graciously agreed to come sit at our house with our kids while James took Rob's car. Keep in mind that it is 7:30 at night and Rob hasn't even been home yet for the day. James assured him that he wouldn't be long. James found the car at Sonic, (I had walked over to Wal-Mart to do my shopping) and got the post all cleaned off. Unfortunately, what he discovered was a crack in the battery, and as a result, a completely dead battery. We had to walk back over to Wal-Mart to buy a new (expensive) battery. James got it put in and went back home to relieve Rob of his duties. Meanwhile, at our house, Rob was sitting peacefully when he heard a loud thump and a resulting wail of pain coming from Lizzy in her crib. He went upstairs to see what was wrong and found blood pouring out of her mouth. No worries, she had only cut her lip with her teeth (some how) and was easily comforted and put back to bed. James got home and Rob went home. I was on my way home when James called me in a panic and said that he couldn't find his wallet. I turned back around to take on the worthless task of trying to find his wallet at either Sonic or Wal-Mart. I went to Sonic first with no luck and then on to Wal-Mart. I was standing in the customer service line when James called me back to say that Rob had found James' wallet in his car. The kind person that Rob is, ran it all the way back to our house to return it, AND he did it with a smile!

This wasn't the only time that Rob and Jocelyn have rescued us from Wal-Mart, and I'm guessing it won't be the last. I just hope that they stay our friends that long! Thank you so much, both of you, for all you do for us!

We're Baaaaaaaack!

2010-03-01T12:38:00.000-08:00

And we had SO much fun! However, we're not big picture takers, so believe me when I tell you, this is every single picture we took. And, pretty much in this order.

This picture isn't so great, but I thought it would be good to share EVERY picture we took. I wanted to take this to show the castle in the back, but as you can see, it really only showcases how James has a hard time keeping his eyes open for pictures, and we should have turned off the flash.
You know how they always take your picture while on the rides? This is the picture we took of the picture they took of us on Space Mountain. That's why it's blurry.

Classic picture. How come Utah doesn't look like this in February?

Preparing to enter Indiana Jones ride. It rained on us that morning. Hence the slicker that I was wearing in the above picture. However, the slickers didn't prevent water soaking our pants. Check out our soaked pants in the next two pictures.

I'm either frightened to be going on Indiana Jones, or I'm shivering with cold from the wet pants.

Goof and Goofy. Goofy was much taller than James.

I had to squat really low because I was much taller than Mickey.

We really did have such a great time, mostly due to the fact that we knew our kids were being so well taken care of by my sister and her hubby. The kids didn't seemed too phased by our disappearance or our return. I guess they don't really love us. Actually, we woke Logan up when we got home and he seemed very hyper and excited to talk to me, but would get mad if James came near him. Odd.

Now we are planning our next trip to Disneyland, but this next time we will take our kids. :)

Tomorrow...

2010-02-24T10:08:00.000-08:00

we leave! Can you tell where we are going based off our calendar?
Do you need a closer look?

This is what I found yesterday. James is no artist, so please don't judge him. :)

Oh yeah, and don't even think about breaking into our house while we're gone. My sister and brother-in-law will be living in our house. Her nickname in college was "tough", so beware.

Ruth's B-Day Cake

2010-02-20T10:54:00.000-08:00

A friend from high school, T.K, hired me to make these cakes for her daughter, Ruth's, first birthday. I hope they're what she wanted!

Goofballs

2010-02-19T09:57:00.000-08:00

I'm related to a bunch of goofballs. Don't believe me? I've got proof!

When I took all of these pictures of Lizzy I told her to smile. She is starting to understand that when we get the camera out and tell her to smile, she is supposed to look cute. These pictures demonstrate her version of smiling.

I kept trying to get a normal picture of James, but it just wasn't happening. As pay back, I decided to share them with the world!

Every once in a while I get an itch to play the piano all day. Today is one of those days. I also decided to get my trumpet out. I've tried to play it before but it has made the kids cry, so it's been a long time since I've been able to play it for more than 30 seconds. Logan was very interested in it so I decided to let him try and play. I was shocked that he actually got it to make noise! Some adults can't even do that on their first try.

The following video was taken the same night as all of the pictures. It was after dinner but nobody knew I was taking the video. Now you can see what I live with every day!

I hope you enjoyed this glimpse into my every day life!

Water Fight

2010-02-12T07:36:00.001-08:00

It was 10:30 last night and we were about to head up the stairs to bed. A small series of events took place that engaged us in a water fight. Our bathroom got soaked and there was some squealing in front of our kids rooms. (Luckily it didn't wake them up.)

I won.

I would hope that most other couples act as much like children as we do. Our marriage wouldn't be the same without the wrestling, water fights, and dead arms.

It's called love, right Stephen and Jeana?

Talk About a...

2010-02-08T13:41:00.000-08:00

Crazy weekend!

In August my sisters and I planned a sister's reunion of sorts. The soonest we were all available to do it was this last weekend, February 5-7. Three of my sisters live out of state, so they all bought their plane tickets to come out here. A couple of months later, James' sister Becky announces that she is getting married the same weekend! Not to mention it's the same weekend as the super bowl and James' birthday.

Sadly, I don't have any pictures of my sister's weekend....YET. I'll have some eventually. We had a blast, I thought. Shopping, food, visiting; perfect.

James drove to Idaho Friday morning while I spent the day with my sisters. I broke off from the party on Saturday to go to Idaho so I wouldn't miss the wedding.
The pictures are all candid shots because I was taking them in between the real pictures. The above is all the siblings. Below is all the siblings plus Dad. I somehow missed getting one with Dixie in it. (That's James' mom.)

I'm a bad wife and didn't even make a cake for James. I would have, believe me, but there just wasn't any need for any more cake after the wedding! This is one of the left over cakes served at the wedding. I left to come back to Utah Sunday morning (without James), so I didn't even get to see this cake in person with the candles in it. I did frost it the day before though!

Colton is celebrating the fact that James is now 30!

James got home on Monday afternoon and found this basket of goodness! Every year for his birthday I make him a candy poster, but a friend gave me this idea so I stole it! There are 30 candy bars taped to lollipop sticks stuck in a basket full of conversation hearts. Each candy bar has a reason why I love him on it. 30 reasons for his 30 years of life.

My mom's birthday was last week and this is the cake I made for her. I stole this idea from cakewrecks.com. (Check it out!) The candy sprinkles spell out "mom". You may ask why but my answer is, "just because"!

Here is the wedding cake I made for Becky's and Scott's wedding. We're so happy that all of our siblings are married now! But I am sad that I don't get to make wedding cakes for my siblings any more. I suppose the nieces and nephews will be getting married soon enough. The oldest are 18, so maybe in a few years! :)

He Came Out of the Closet

2010-01-27T12:02:00.000-08:00

...looking like this.

I know this should be worrisome, but he's only three. So instead of worrying, I took pictures!

Taking A Moment For Logan

2010-01-16T19:23:00.001-08:00

Logan is a ball of goof. I just thought I would share with you some of his latest goofiness.

Here is Logan sporting some of Lizzy's pants. I had a huge pile of clothes on the floor sorting through the keepers and the throw-em-outers, when I looked up and saw this cuteness. One day, when it was time for lunch, I asked Logan what he wanted to eat. He proclaimed that he wanted olives for lunch! He had never asked for olives before, so it surprised me. I made him eat a sandwich first and then we opened a can of olives. I showed him how much fun it is to put them on your fingers. I think it was just as fun for me because the olives actually fit on his fingers without splitting them. (They always split and break when I put them on my fingers.)

Here, I was just trying to get my cutie pies to smile for a picture. Logan was telling Lizzy to smile. I never got a good shot of both of them looking at the camera and smiling.

Logan hasn't been a big talker but he is just discovering that he has things to say, and boy does he have a lot to share! A lot of it is still just gibberish, but he likes the sound of his voice and I usually like it too. I remember the very first time he sang a song. It felt monumental to me. James and I had been nursery workers, so we saw how well all of the other children talked and also saw that they enjoyed singing. But Logan stayed resolutely silent. As a result, I LOVE to listen to him sing now. If I can get him to sing by himself I will listen intently and I enjoy every moment of it. He really likes to sing along to a song in Charlotte's Web, and I've been trying to get a video of it for a while now. He usually gets camera shy, so this was a good moment. Enjoy it! I sure did.

Crazy Girl

2010-01-07T14:16:00.000-08:00

When we found out Logan was a climber, people assured me it was just because he is a boy. So, what does that say about Lizzy? That she is really a boy? Because her climbing has started at a younger age than Logan's did.
Don't worry, this ladder really isn't as steep as it looks, I took the picture sideways to give you a better idea of how high she climbed on the ladder. Speaking of the ladder, it's new! It goes up to our attic where James is laying down boards as I type. Building a new room for it's storage potential just wasn't enough; now we're converting the attic into storage space!

Can you tell we're trying to get as comfortable as possible in our house? Based on the wonderful down turn of the economy we know we will be in this house for a VERY long time. However, at this point we've done so much to it (the house) that we would have a very hard time moving out!

We've repainted, laid tile in the kitchen and the bathroom, recarpted, built shelves in the garage, built a brand new room out of thin air, and now we've installed this ladder and storage in the attic. I've said it about 3 times before, but this time I think I really mean it. We are done with house projects. What else could there possibly be to do? Please don't answer that question. Don't give James any more ideas!

Anyway, here is a video demonstrating Lizzy's monkey skills.

I had to include this next video simply because she gave me such a precious smile.

Christmas 2009

2009-12-31T17:15:00.000-08:00

This first picture is actually from Christmas 2008, when I was 40 pounds heavier. :) In my defense, I had just given birth to Lizzy two weeks earlier. The picture is of significance because (and I think I've shared this before) these are the three grandchildren born on my parent's side of the family in the year 2008. Coincidentally, all three girls have names that start with "E". Left to right, Elizabeth, Emmeline, Eva. Those are 6 fine looking women no? The other mom's are my sister's-in-law, Erika and Jeana.

This is what the "three E's" looked like this Christmas. They've all got longer hair! These are two of my brother's, Ron and Stephen. Don't mind the crown on Stephen's head; we were about to reenact the Christmas story and he was a wise man.

This was our Christmas morning mess. Lizzy sat in her chair basically the whole morning and was the happiest in it. She played with her new baby doll the whole time. Logan is playing with his new tools. They were by far his favorite present. I guess it helped that he didn't get a whole lot of anything else.

James is showing off his loot here. Not that you care, but the two zip lock bags are full of homemade hot chocolate mix. His mother made it for the family, so it is James' favorite kind of hot chocolate. I admit, it's pretty good! I made one batch botterscotch flavored.

Please excuse my slightly drugged look. James caught me mid blink. Regardless of how I look in the picture, all of my presents look pretty good, don't you think? I've already really enjoyed using my rice/vegetable steamer and my jewelery stand. Unfortunately, James didn't buy any new jewelery to go in it. ;)

Lastly, here is the kids' loot, combined. It includes the presents they got from our family gift exchange (thank's Andrea!) and from their grandparents.

I'm sorry to be blogging about our Christmas. I know most of you probably don't care, but I needed something to blog about! It has been too long for me!

So....our Christmas was good. How was yours?

A Day at the Doctor's

2009-12-24T10:30:00.000-08:00

On Tuesday, Lizzy had her one year well check. I left Logan at my mom's house so my hands weren't as full. Lizzy is growing well enough. Here are her stats.
Weight: 20 lbs 15 oz - 50%
Height 31 inches - 96%
Head Circumference 17 inches - 55%

She started bawling when the doctor took her out of my arms, so we know she doesn't like strangers. She was also horrified that the nurse had the audacity to pierce her legs 3 times!

When the appointment was over I picked Logan up from my Mom's and we headed home. The whole way home Logan kept begging me to take him to the doctor. I explained to him that he didn't need to see the doctor. Once we got home it only took Logan 2 hours to figure out how to make sure he could see the doctor that day as well. He was running up and down our hallway then tripped and fell headfirst into our nightstand. Unfortunately I don't have a picture of the initial gash. (James has yet to forgive me for not taking that picture.) But, we do have pictures of Logan's 3 stitches.

Call me strange, but I like the idea of his having a visible scar later in his life. Whenever I see scars on other people I'm always so curious as to what the story is. I can imagine up the most interesting battle stories. Logan's story won't be that cool, but he'll have people wondering, right?

Family Pictures

2009-12-22T10:44:00.000-08:00

I apologize that I've already shared some of these, so they are nothing new to you, but I felt like sharing them all together!

We had a girl in our ward take our family pictures about a month ago. I really wanted outdoor pictures, but our scheduled day for pictures was FRIGID cold outside! Maybe next year. Anyway, these are the 5 that we chose.

There were NO pictures of Logan smiling. Literally, none. James and I both really liked this picture though. Can't you feel him staring right through you?

Of course there is the kissing picture, which I've described in a previous post.

I'm not sure how I feel about this picture. I think it makes me look like I'm a lot bigger than James. It did teach me a valuable lesson though. From now on I'll make sure he is in front of me for the picture.

I'm hoping that by next year the kids will learn to smile on demand. :)

The Birthday "Party"

2009-12-21T11:05:00.000-08:00

It really wasn't much of a party, just opening presents and eating cake. But, my sister Sarah, husband Bret, brother Ron, wife Erika and their kids, came and helped us make it more of a party. Oh yeah, and my mom was there because it was at her house. :)

Everybody was eager to help Lizzy open her presents. She got a baby cd player and foam blocks.

I may be capable of making a fancier cake, but this is all a baby should get in my opinion. I've come to find out that I'm very one sided in my thinking. Luckily, James agrees with ME.

Lizzy tore right into it! Maybe I should have given her a full sized cake after all!

Nope, maybe not. It looks like one cupcake was enough to make her woozy.

She ate the whole cupcake and stayed pretty clean in the process! Man, I still don't know where she got those big beautiful blue eyes!

Happy Birthday Lizzy Girl! We LOVE you!!!!

One Year Ago

2009-12-19T14:38:00.000-08:00

Warning: It's a LONG one, but oh so good!

One year ago I was very anxious to give birth to the prettiest little girl in my life. Elizabeth Dixie Mickelsen. Lizzy’s due date was December 29th, but I was nervous about having her on Christmas Eve or day, so I opted to have her induced on the 20th. Here is the story of that day.

December 20th 2008 was on a Saturday. James normally works on Saturday’s, but he took this day off in hopes that we would be able to have Lizzy induced that day. It wasn’t a sure thing because a lot of women wanted to be induced that day. I had to wait my turn. We got up that day, I got all gussied up because I knew it was going to be a good day. We went to the ward Christmas party, which was actually a breakfast. I got a lot of strange looks and questions from people because they all knew that was the day for my induction. Fittingly, (I thought) I won the prize from a drawing at the party. It made the day feel that much more special. James and I went home from the party and I think I called the hospital 3 different times that day asking if I could come in yet. I was turned down every time because they were SO busy! We all took a nap that afternoon. At 5:00 pm the hospital finally called and asked how soon we could be there. I said, “Give me 20 minutes”! They said, “give us more like 30”. Ha! James dropped me off while he went on to my mom’s house to drop off Logan. I got checked in, had my water broken, got my epidural around 7:00 and just waited.

I must dedicate a paragraph to crazy nurse Leah. That is how she will always be remembered because she was truly crazy. I didn’t understand her humor, probably because she didn’t have much. She was rude and crass and at one point threw the blanket off of me completely in some sort of retaliation to me asking her if she was going to check me. There is more to share, but I’ll save it for myself unless you ask me directly. Then I will share more horrifying details about her.

On my mom's side of the family, there were three girls born in the calendar year.

They are the three "E's". Eva, Emmaline, Elizabeth.

Even though my mom had Logan, she really wanted to be there for the birth, so she had a neighbor come and sit at her house after Logan went to bed at 7:30, and then my sister Sarah took over sometime around 10:00, I think. I’m so glad my mom was there, and I think James was too. I had an epidural that did great to eliminate any pain I might have been feeling, but it had a nasty side effect of making me feel completely claustrophobic in my own body. I had an overwhelming need to move my legs constantly, but I just couldn’t! James and my mom were very good to keep moving my legs around. That didn’t happen to me when I had Logan, so I’m not sure what was going on. As a result, I’m very interested into having my next baby using only hypnosis as my analgesic. Stay tuned for that story.

Elizabeth Dixie, with her name's sake,

Grandma Dixie.

Around 11:30 I was finally able to convince my crazy nurse Leah to check me again because she hadn’t for a couple of hours. She was convinced I hadn’t progressed a lot, but I was convinced otherwise, due to the pressure I could feel. Sure enough, Lizzy was crowning. This got my mom really excited. Out of all of her grand children, one has a birthday on December 19th, another has a birthday on December 21st, so the prospect of having Lizzy come on the 20th was exciting. The nurse paged the doctor and we waited and waited. During the waiting, my mom kept telling just to push Lizzy out; the nurses were capable of delivering her. I opted to keep my legs together and wait. After literally searching the hospital for him, the nurses finally found him and rushed him up to our room. (He had been in the ER helping out with an emergency.) He walked in at 11:54 pm; not much time to get Lizzy in this world before midnight to reach my mom’s hope of having a grand kid born on the 20th. I started pushing at 11:55 and Lizzy was born at 11:59. No time to spare! As soon as the nurse declared the time of birth, everybody in the room burst out in cheers.

Our little Lizzy bug is one year old. Crazy. I’ll update you on her stats later. I don’t have them yet because her doctor’s appointment is on Tuesday. She loves her mommy, way too much! She loves to be held so she can snuggle with you. She likes to give kisses and hugs. She really enjoys playing with Logan; they get hyper and start squealing in delight when they’re having a lot of fun together. She can stand alone for a few seconds at a time, and likes to walk with help. I don’t think she’ll be walking on her own for another month or so. She still doesn’t have any teeth yet, but I can see two just under the surface, so they are coming! She is such a good natured baby most of the time. No matter the situation, we can get her to laugh within seconds. We love her so much and are excited to have her in our lives.

Lizzy with her cute little friend, Rylee Egbert.

The photographer told Logan to give Lizzy a kiss. Instead, Lizzy threw herself

forward to grab Logan's shirt and planted this kiss right on him!

Our beautiful ONE year old girl.

Friends and Tepanyaki

2009-12-18T10:03:00.000-08:00

I'd been wanting to go to Tepanyaki for some time. We convinced our friends, Rob and Jocelyn, to go with us on Monday. Right before we left, Jocelyn reminded me to grab our camera.

This is a picture of Rob and Jocelyn driving in front of us. It was taken in the car, so now you can tell how dirty our windshield is. ;)
We went out to "celebrate" the end of the semester for Rob. He just finished an especially grueling semester of school. Good job Rob! And good job to Jocelyn for surviving as well. :)

Don't we look eager to eat?

The whole reason I wanted to go to this restaurant is because they cook the food in front of you and do all sorts of tricks while cooking it. Part of the "show" is flipping shrimp into your mouth. I was the only one at the table who caught my shrimp. Jocelyn was kind enough to film it. I know all of you have been thinking that the only thing missing in your lives is a video of me eating shrimp. Ha! Thanks for the fun night Egberts!

My Beautiful Family!

2009-12-16T11:24:00.000-08:00

We had a girl in our ward take our family pictures last week. It was frustrating to work with Logan because he gets SO shy around people he doesn't know. We couldn't get him to crack a smile once through the whole photo shoot. To prove to ourselves that the kid could smile we went home and took some silly pictures of our own.

See, he's a cheese ball!
We were able to get Lizzy to smile in her individual pictures, but not our family pictures. Oh well. She does have a great smile, if I do say so myself. See?

For everybody who says Logan looks like his Dad I tell you to look at this picture. I think he looks like me! Kind of. We have the same eyes at least. Thank goodness he doesn't have that Ward nose! (If you are unsure of what a "ward" nose is, just look at mine!)

Aw man, I sure do have some handsome guys in my life!

Stay tuned for the professional pictures. I'm still waiting myself. :)

Jumpin' Jack's Fun

2009-12-06T16:47:00.000-08:00

All of my family was in town two weeks ago for my sister Sarah's wedding. Everybody went back to their regular lives shortly thereafter, but my sister Risa decided to stick around for another week. I tried to make the most of it by playing with her often. We took our kids to Jumpin' Jack's one day and had a blast. The best part is that they let the adults play too!

James loves this picture of Lanelle, Risa's daughter.
There's a lot of static electricity.

James and I went down a slide together. We tried to "surf" down, but were unsuccessful.

James had TONS of fun. I know he's trying to figure out when we can go again.

The slides are very steep, that's why I have the look of fear on my face. I have an issue with heights.

We seriously had so much fun. I hope that these links work. We took a few videos of us going down the barrier to the slide. James started it (no video of him, sorry) and he was more successful than Risa and I were. Risa's video is the funniest and the craziest, considering the fact that she is 20 weeks pregnant in it. Enjoy them! They give us a laugh every time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ohd37lM8ofg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkmwscX6l5o

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOw6ZtC3KwU

How Do You Know?

2009-12-04T15:45:00.000-08:00

How do you know when you bake too much? When you find unexplained frosting in your fridge.

I made a cake today and when I went to put the left over frosting in the fridge, I discovered two other tupperware with frosting in them. One of them is left over frosting from brownies I made last weekend, but I have NO memory of making the other frosting. I can't even think of what I would have baked in the last two weeks that would warrant it being in my fridge. It's very frustrating.

With that being said, here is the latest creation from my kitchen. I was stressed about it because I normally take a few days to do a cake to lessen the stress. However, this one has a deadline of tomorrow so I had to go to the store to get the ingredients for the cream filling, then I came home and baked the cake (from scratch) let it cool, filled it, frosted it, covered it (with fondant) and decorated it. Then I cleaned up my mess. How long did it take me you ask? Minus the going to the store part, the rest took me 4 hours. I know, I shocked myself. I guess that's another sign that I bake too much.
Happy Birthday Vivien! I hope you like the cake.

Side note: I realize that a perfectly wrapped round gift is highly improbable. However, the only direction I got from Vivien (besides the flavor) is that she wanted a round cake. I was up to my own devices on the rest of it to make it look "birthdayish".

Do You Smell Something?

2009-11-28T20:59:00.000-08:00

We did, tonight. It's not uncommon for me to smell something burning in my oven when cooking something else. There's always some random overflowed food burning on the bottom of my oven. Consequently, it usually makes the smoke detectors go off too. Tonight I was cooking Impossible Cheeseburger Pie. I smelled the smell and thought nothing of it. Then the smoke alarm went off. James got right to turning it off while I got up to see what was burning in the oven. I opened the door to see this.

In case you're wondering, that WAS a sippy cup. It was the perfect ending to a day where I was already frustrated beyond my wits end with Logan. He's pushed every one of my buttons the last 2 weeks, and this was just the thing to hit the last button. I'm afraid for tomorrow. He might find another button I didn't know I had.

Bret and Sarah's Wedding Cake

2009-11-25T15:31:00.000-08:00

I got a new brother-in-law today. And it's about time too! Sarah is the third in our family of 8 but she is the last to get married. I guess I should be grateful, because if she had gotten married years ago, I wouldn't have had the chance to make her wedding cake! I really enjoyed the experience, mostly because nothing went wrong. Everything went way too smoothly in fact. I hope you enjoy the pictures. My sister Andrea commandeered my camera and took MANY pictures of me and the cake. I had to completely decorate the top tier once I got there, that's why so many of the pictures are of me working on it.

This one is of the finished product. Click on it so you can fully enjoy it's gold sparkliness.

Putting on the finishing flourishes.

Gluing on the flowers.

I should be a hand model, no?

Grabbing a flower from my flower stash to glue on the cake.

Seriously, click on the top picture to look at it better. I loved all of the sparklies.

Almost Ready!

2009-11-24T10:25:00.000-08:00

My sisters wedding is tomorrow, finally! Can you all tell how much I obsess over making cakes? It's a really big deal to me. I've never felt like any talent has come very naturally to me, and decorating cakes is no exception. I always experience some sort of problem and it FRUSTRATES me!!!!!! It frustrates James a bit as well because he takes the brunt of my frustration. Poor guy. I'm so glad he puts up with me. Actually he does more than that. He still loves me even through the whole process.

I know why wedding cakes cost so much. They are A LOT of work. I would estimate that I've spent about 10 hours on this cake so far and close to $50 in cost of supplies.

Anyway, this is my pile to load in the car tomorrow morning. Left to right, the bottom two tiers of the cake, fully decorated, next we have all the extra frosting I will and may need, in the white box is the cake topper, a glass temple, and lastly we have the top tier of the cake. It isn't decorated yet because I'll need to pick it up and put it on top of the rest of the cake.

I've forgotten my camera the last two times I did a wedding cake, but I've added my camera to that pile so it won't be forgotten. :) I'm actually not so sad that I forgot my camera the first time I did a wedding cake. It was basically a disaster in the aesthetic department. However, the taste got rave reviews. The second cake was significantly better, but still had some problems with it leaning. However, it was fully devoured as well. Yay! Hmm... I think I do have a picture of that second cake somewhere on the computer. I'll hunt it down and if I do indeed have it, I will include it on my next post. Ok, anyway, now I'm on my third wedding cake and I feel great about this one. As long as there are no major disasters. ;) I'll try to get pictures up as soon as possible in the next few days, since I know you are all waiting with baited breath to see it. Ha!

I've done enough talking. Sorry.

Caramel Brownies

2009-11-20T15:02:00.000-08:00

Somebody made these brownies for our Super Saturday. A couple of women were wanting the recipe. I spoke up saying that I have it. I would have to say that Caramel Brownies are some of the best brownies in the world, so I'm sharing the joy.

Ingredients:
1 (18.25 ounce) package German chocolate cake mix (I've used other chocolate cake mixes and they work too!)
3/4 cup melted butter
1/3 cup evaporated milk
1 cup chopped pecans (Optional. I've never put nuts in mine, yuck!)
13 ounces individually wrapped caramels, unwrapped
1/3 cup evaporated milk
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Spray one 9x13 inch pan with non-stick coating .
Combine the cake mix, butter and 1/3 cup evaporated milk. Mix well and spread 2/3 of the batter into pan.
Press pecans into batter and bake for 8 to 10 minutes. (Or don't! Cuz I wouldn't.)
In a saucepan over medium heat, combine the caramel and 1/3 cup evaporated milk. Stir until melted and smooth; pour over cooled cake mix.
Sprinkle chocolate chips on top of caramel and top with spoonfuls of remaining cake mix. Bake for additional l5 to l8 minutes; cool and cut.

I know that it sounds like a lot of work, but they are SOOOOOOO worth it. And, just to give props where props are due, I got this recipe from my sister Laurie who, I'm sure, got it from somebody else! That's always the case with amazing recipes like this one. :) Enjoy them, especially you, Melanie!

An Ode to Water

2009-11-19T14:44:00.001-08:00

Call me crazy, (many have, so you are in good company) but I think that water is the best medicine ever! If I ever feel a cold coming on, I start to guzzle water like a mad woman. I try to drink at least 2 quarts of water a day. (That's 64 oz of water, or half a gallon.) I would estimate that 4 out 5 five times, it makes my cold go away in 1-3 days. I introduced the idea to James, and he is a believer as well! Now, I can't take credit for this amazing discovery, because I learned it from the best roommate ever. (Thanks Carlee!) I had a full on cold start 3 days ago. I put my half gallon of water in the fridge and attacked it the next day. If you had talked to me that day you would have totally said that I had a cold. But, today, two days later, there is no trace of it! It's magic I tell you, magic! I think this is why I rarely drink soda or juice because why would I waste my liquid intake on something that isn't magic?

Here's my challenge to all of you, once you feel a cold coming on, start drinking your water like you never drank it before. Let me know what happens. I'm curious to see if this method should be studied by doctors or not. I've never heard of doctor's telling patients to drink a lot of water to get past a cold. But the should.

Lesson of the Day

2009-11-18T13:42:00.000-08:00

Don't Be Delusional.

That was the lesson I learned today. I was downstairs with Lizzy watching a food network show while Logan was happily playing upstairs. I could tell you what I assumed he was doing, but we both know that what I assumed he was doing was not what he was really doing. Hence the, don't be delusional lesson.

Here is the bookshelf in our new playroom. Yeah, it has more than just books on it. It also has every single hair product in our house on it. From left to right, hairspray, gel, more hairspray, mousse, even more hairspray, hair detangler, and on the top shelf, by the dinosaur, the real culprit, hair wax.

Cute, isn't he? I cleaned him all up and then went back downstairs to finish my show. Again, I was delusional. The second time I left him alone he got the humidifier out of Lizzy's room. He poured some of the water on the carpet, but then found about 20 finger puppets and put them in the humidify, along with some other random toys. I didn't take a picture of that because it wasn't quite as funny. :)

My other delusions revolve around wedding cakes. I always get excited about decorating a cake, but, somewhere along the line, something goes wrong. So far the only thing that has gone wrong with this cake is that the flowers I started making were a terrible shade of green. I scraped that and started over making ivory colored flowers.

Here is what 300+ flowers look like on one cookie sheet.

And, close up. The picture doesn't show the light dusting of gold glitter on them. I love shiny things!

Stay tuned until next week for the finished product! The wedding is the day before Thanksgiving.

Mary Turns 30

2009-11-10T12:50:00.000-08:00

I was very excited when somebody asked me to make a birthday cake for my good friend, Mary. She turned 30 this last weekend, so I knew it had to be a really great design. I'm pleased with the design, but that dang fondant fought with me! I had tons of air bubbles in it. I hope not to experience that problem with my sisters wedding cake. (Hers is in two weeks.)

Here's a close up of the coffin that was on the top of the cake. I carved it out of a solid piece of chocolate. Then I painted it black, with food coloring of course. I made sure Mary ate a piece of her coffin. :)

Here's the cute picture I couldn't find for my last post. I thought Logan looked so adorable with this Bride of Frankenstein wig on.

Odds and Ends

2009-11-07T09:47:00.000-08:00

Argh, I can't find the picture that I really wanted to share! It was on my computer one minute and gone the next. I'll find it and share it with my next post, which by the way, I am super excited about. Stay tuned!

One morning I came down the stairs and this is how I found my kiddos. Logan was totally chilling on the arm of the couch. He's playing with his belly button of course. That must be hereditary because one of my sisters always played with her belly button at this age.

In this picture, Logan is wearing Lizzy's black tights. I had just bought them for Lizzy but I guess he thought they were for him. I went upstairs to put Lizzy down for a nap and when I came back down, Logan was walking around like this. It wasn't really walking as much as it was waddling. Cute!

And this is what I found today! For some time Lizzy has been climbing up and down the very bottom step. That's as far up as she would ever go. However, today she decided would be the day she scaled the whole set of stairs! She was up 5 steps before I even saw her! I guess I have to start paying closer attention to her.

I hope you enjoyed my odds and ends.

Happy Halloween!

2009-10-31T11:08:00.000-07:00

'Tis the season for black frosting! Logan always enjoys licking the beaters, and this time it was a batch of black frosting. Cute isn't he?

We carved our pumpkins a few nights ago. James decided that this year, he was going to carve his pumpkin like a real man: with power tools.

Logan is modeling with our finished products. I call them: "Old Man Pirate" and "Laughing Vampire". We call the cute kid in the middle, Logan.

Logan and Lizzy are modeling their Halloween costumes. Logan isn't thrilled about Elmo riding around on his head, so I was impressed that he put up with it long enough to have his picture taken.

Actually, the real shocker is that Logan has been letting us take his pictures the last few days. Yay!

Happy Halloween everybody!

Catching Up

2009-10-29T14:06:00.000-07:00

It's only been a couple of weeks since I last posted, but I feel so behind! It's been a couple of busy weeks for me; I like that.

Ok, so what's kept me busy, you want to know? I don't really remember. I had to refer to my pictures as a reminder.

Here is one of a batch of apple butter. I made two different batches using the apples from my mom's trees. I also forced my friend Mary into making a batch for herself. It was soooooo much easier to make than I had been anticipating. If you've got a lot of apples, I recommend turning them into apple butter. It is super yummy.
I have also made two of these birthday cakes and 60 of the cupcakes in the following picture. A friend in the ward asked me to do these for her son's birthday.

(Argh! I just now spotted the three green dots in a row on the cake! Sorry Viv!)

Speaking of cake, I get to make a lot more cake! Today I baked a cake for my friend's birthday, and in a few weeks I will be making my sister's wedding cake. Careful planning is going into that cake. This wedding has been A LONG time in coming for her, so I want to make sure it is extra special. The wedding is the day before Thanksgiving, so be patient for the pictures. As for the friend's b-day cake, I'll get the pictures up as soon as I'm done with it.

The following are just random pictures from every day life. Logan requested that this picture be taken of him. He usually screams and runs away when he sees the camera, so I was happy to oblige when he asked me to take this. I was lucky to get this shot because right after I took it he got mad at me for trying to take his picture. What the? Strange kid. Cute pic though. He dressed himself.

These are the other two crazy people in my life. It's seriously difficult to get a good picture of James. The first one I took of him he had his eyes closed. This was the second picture and he doesn't like it. He thinks he look possessed. It doesn't matter though, because I was really taking the picture of Lizzy. I love her hair in it. It is her post bath look. Come to think of it, this is James' post bath look too. :)

I hope you enjoyed the path down the last two weeks of my life! I guess I wasn't as busy as I thought. Oh well.

One of THOSE Mornings

2009-10-15T08:23:00.000-07:00

Logan has been potty trained for a little while now. He did really well at first but has regressed somewhat since then. He hasn't regressed in the sense that he doesn't know what to do now, it's all just a power struggle with him at this point. For whatever reason, he hates to pee in the potty. He has no problems telling me when he has to poo, but pee is the power struggle. I've even started giving him treats again for when he goes potty by himself and actually does it in the potty.

This morning happened. Logan once again decided that he was NOT going to pee in the potty. I put him in the bathroom and told him he could come out once he was done. He kept asking to come out while I kept telling him to go potty so he could come out. While I was waiting for him to decide to go to the bathroom, I changed Lizzy into her new diaper and clothes for the day. I went back to check on Logan. I opened the door only to find that he had decided to pee on the floor. In my own private rage, I completely forgot about Lizzy, grabbed Logan and threw him in the tub. I turned around to see Lizzy, in her new outfit, crawling right through the puddle of pee. Needless to say, they both got baths this morning and I have lost a little bit more sanity.

Are you sad that I had no pictures of this episode? Don't be. The only thing the pictures would have depicted would be crazed mother, crying son, helpless 10 month old soaked in pee. It wasn't a pretty picture.

Pumpkin Picking

2009-10-14T11:03:00.000-07:00

We finally decided that it was time to go get our pumpkins. Luckily, our good friends, the Anderson's, were thinking the same thing. We decided to go to Schmidt's together. James, Von, and Lizzy decided to scope out the pumpkins while waiting for the rest of us to catch up.

This was the best picture I could get of all the kids. Logan still hates to have his picture taken, so the fact that his face is in this picture is lucky. Julia and Ellie have clearly had their pictures taken a lot. They were PERFECT posers!

Clearly Logan doesn't know what a "pretty" pumpkin looks like.

Nice load, no?

These two stuck together pretty closely. It was so cute! Until they tried to run out into the street that is. :)

Now, go get YOUR pumpkins! This was a great place. It's on the corner of 9000 south and 2200 west. The real reason I'm endorsing this place is because these local farmers are in my Mom's ward. It feels good to support people you know, you know? The place is very family friendly too, so GO!

Happy Halloween!

Cooking Blog

2009-10-12T14:56:00.001-07:00

Sorry, this will be the only time I remind you, but I did officially start my cooking blog. I think I will give it a more prominent spot on this blog so you remember to look at it. Well see how long it takes for me to get around to doing that. In them mean time, visit it, cook stuff, tell me what you think. Will this be worth while to keep up? I hope so! It's been more work than I'm used to. Clearly I'm not used to a lot of work. :)

Visit it at amickelsen.blogspot.com

Or you can find it under my list of friends and family. It's called "Heart of MY Home". James doesn't like the title. Maybe it will change. We'll see!

We're Finished!

2009-10-07T19:20:00.000-07:00

James spent all day putting on the new base boards and hanging the new doors. It was more of a job than even he realized it would be.

We still want to put shelves in the closet and we need to touch up a lot of paint. But, that won't happen until this winter. I think we are all sick and tired of this project and we are just ready to get back to real life that isn't centered around this addition. Enjoy the silly video!

On another note, I decided that I really wanted to start another blog about what I cook on a day to day basis. It won't be anything fancy; I mostly just wanted to share the few tips I know and to keep a record of what I cook for my own use. If you like the blog, please feel free to share your comments and or suggestions. You can link to it from my list of family and friends, it's called "The Heart of MY Home" or you can get to it from amickelsen.blogspot.com. I'll post something on it soon, so if you are interested in this new blog and realize I don't have anything posted yet, don't get mad at me! I will tomorrow or the next day. Thanks for your interest!

We're DONE! Almost.

2009-09-26T10:20:00.001-07:00

The new carpet is in, all of the walls are painted. All that is left is building shelves in the closet, installing the base boards and new doors. I would take pictures of how it looks now but, 1. I'm too lazy, 2. I want to wait until it's ALL finished before I do, 3. You are welcome to come look at it now anyway! We have had a few visitors, and we don't mind if you come either.

When we first bought our house we loved the vaulted ceiling. It wasn't too long, however, before we decided that it was a big waste of space and an energy. For some reason it took us living here for two years before we decided that adding a room there would be a good idea. Once James made up his mind to do it he had it started two weeks later. We are now three weeks into it from when we started. Both of us are in shock at how smoothly everything has gone.

To get to the real reason of this post, I just want to say how overwhelmed I am with my feelings for James. I've always known he was a hard worker, (one of the reasons I married him) but he has just blown my mind this last month. He has still worked full time at work before coming home and going straight to work on the house. This last week, Lizzy developed a nasty cold and became a pill. Just to keep her happy James would put her in a hiking back pack and "pack' her around on his shoulders. He did this mostly while we were painting all of the ceilings. We didn't have the poles to put the rollers on, so that meant we were hiking up and down ladders constantly. I know he was thoroughly exhausted (we both were) but he just kept on trooping with NO complaint! Ever. Literally. I was the one whining about my sore arms, the blisters the paint rollers put on our hands, my sore thighs from going up and down the ladders, and how hungry I was because we never stopped for food breaks.

Anyway, I just really wanted to share that. Stay tuned for more pictures of our house, or just feel free to come by and look at it. I promise it's not that exciting, especially if you never saw what our house looked like before. Because, it basically looks like it was always supposed to look like this!

Now You REALLY See It.

2009-09-24T10:03:00.000-07:00

We are nearly done!!! The carpet comes tomorrow, then we are just waiting on the doors. This picture is of the new room after it was framed. The new room is above our living room, and you enter it right when you walk up the stairs. The white wall you see in this picture is the top of the stair rail.
The following pictures are of the mostly finished product. If you want to see the before pictures, from the previous post, "Now You See It", click here: http://jamesandalicia.blogspot.com/2009/09/do-you-see-it.html

I tried to take the pictures from roughly the same angels as the before pictures were taken. This one was taken from my front door. The ceiling you see is the brand new ceiling! Above it is the brand new floor of our bedroom.

This is taken from my stairway. You are seeing down into my living room. On the right you would keep walking up the stairs and right into the new room. The wall right in front (not the living room wall that is green) is one of the walls to our new room.

This was taken from the top of the stairs in the hallway. You can see that we don't have the door yet for the new room. We also haven't put the new base board on.

Ta Da! The new room! Behind Logan is the walk-in closet.

I hope you enjoyed the tour. I'll take a few more pictures once the carpet is in and the doors have been installed. Oh yeah, so you should study the old carpet that you can see in the above pictures in order to more fully appreciate the new carpet that will be coming. I anticipate a long and stressful day tomorrow since the carpet guys are doing it all in the same day. That means lots of furniture juggling and children juggling.

Stay tuned!

For Any Who Care

2009-09-22T11:15:00.000-07:00

We're almost done. At this moment I am ready to plop over and go to sleep for the next century. Instead, I choose to update all of my avid fans about our house. Ok, so, I'm sorry there are no pictures, deal with it. They will be coming VERY soon!

The room itself is done. The drywall people finished yesterday (Monday) and made a royally huge mess in the process. We wanted to start painting ASAP but we knew that we had to clean off the walls first from all of the dust that attacked them during the sanding process. We started with wet wash clothes, but because there was SO much dust, it just turned the dust into paste right on the wall. So, then we started "dusting" the walls. That did no good because it just stirred up the dust but it landed right back on the walls. We finally got the vacuum out and vacuumed off all of the walls. Then we went back with wet wash clothes and wiped them down. Then came the taping and painting! I think we started painting around noon yesterday and we finished (for the day) at 10:00 that night. This morning I've painted more, but it's still not done. The main thing left to paint is the ceiling of the new room. Then just touch up.

We ordered new doors, one to go in the room and one for the closet in the new room. They won't be here for at least 1 more week. So we still have those left and the new baseboard that goes in that room.

We should be finished with the painting tomorrow at the latest. I'm thinking it will be done tonight. What's the rush on the painting you ask? Well, I'll tell you. We are re-carpeting our WHOLE house on Friday. (So excited!) We wanted to have all the walls painted at least two days before that so that the paint will be less likely to scratch.

Paint today, carpet on Friday, doors and trim sometime next week. After that? Rest. Rest. Rest.

We didn't even get to watch Hero's last night. I don't think we're going to get around to it tonight either. Maybe on Wednesday.

Hope you enjoyed the update. I would go take pictures, but you guys just want to see the finished product right? I knew it.

This One's For You Andrea

2009-09-16T12:14:00.000-07:00

Alternate post title: New Love

Here is a glimpse of my closet. I'm shamed to show you all how badly I treat those whom I love the most. I am a true girl, I love shoes. I really do. Love them. I do not own enough, mostly because I can't stomach spending more than $20 on a pair of shoes. However, nearly two weeks ago I fell in love and I fell hard.
I was wandering up and down the shoe aisle at Target. It is a regular haunt of mine. I walked past a beautiful pair of shoes that had my name written all over them. For those of you who don't know, Mossimo is really the word for Alicia. Anyway, it was love at first sight. They only had one pair in my size! They weren't on sale, so I hemmed and hawed about it for about 5 minutes before picking them up. I walked around the store with them in my cart for the next 30 minutes. It felt like they belonged to me! At the end of 30 minutes I had to put them back on the shelf. $23.99 was about $3.99 more than I usually allow myself to spend on a pair of shoes. I slept fitfully the whole night knowing that somebody else was going to buy MY pair of shoes. It was the next morning, and I must have whined to James one too many times because he told me to GO BUY THE SHOES! I complied.

And we'll live happily ever after.

Mutual

2009-09-12T10:09:00.000-07:00

It has been a few years, (7, I think) since I've been to mutual. Thanks to having a good friend (or two, or three) in the Young Women's Presidency, I was invited last Tuesday night! I don't think they invited me just for my good company, though that would have been nice. I went so I could demonstrate cake decorating! It was a lot of fun too, and I always like a good reason to eat cake!

This is a picture of all the girls working hard on their cakes.
This is a picture of their leaders working hard to, um....get to know each other better? :) Tiffany is actually washing dishes too; she's a multi-tasker.

The girls' finished cakes! Don't they look great?

And lastly, another cute video.

Lizzy has never been phased by loud noises, ever since she was born. Having construction going on in our house has been no different. She gets especially excited when the saw is on. Strange child. It's even more strange to me, because, while I may be a yeller, I hate loud noises myself. I really really do. I hate whistling, I hate it when people "yell" at you when they are talking, (I had a roommate we had to constantly tell to talk more quietly) I hate the tv being on too loud, and I really hate the sound of the saw, nail gun etc. Lizzy just doesn't seem to care! On the contrary, she really would get excited when the saw was on! Sadly, I didn't get an actual video of her while the saw was on, but I interviewed her about what was going on in our house and she responded well.

Progress

2009-09-11T10:28:00.000-07:00

I took this picture a few days ago. It's of the floor joists that hold up Lizzy's room and is right above our kitchen. Do any of you see the ghost living between our floor boards?
Ok, ok, so it's no ghost. It's really James' feet! He crawled all the way in there to do some wiring. He's crazy.

This picture shows James wiggling out of that tight space.

This was taken yesterday. James' friend from work, Jed (behind James, sorry you can only see the back of his head) has built houses before, so he was our main helper. He helped James put up the floor joists and lay the floor yesterday. Our friend Rob and little Logan are also featured here. Rob came over to see if he could more fully grasp how crazy his friends are.

This bottom picture is what it looks like from our living room looking up. They did all of this yesterday.

This is the view of the new bedroom from upstairs. Right below that new floor is our living room.

James will be sad that I posted this video. It is when he was doing the wiring and was stuck between floor boards. Actually, the video is of him trying to get out. It was quite the trick for him. In his defense, he had no idea that I was taking the video, so please excuse the interesting view of James. :) It's less than flattering, but it really was difficult for him to maneuver.

A Fly

2009-09-10T07:30:00.001-07:00

I just finished reading one of my sister's posts about a fly. It made me think of my own strange experience last night with a fly. I had just finished showering and there was a fly in my bathroom. Towel in hand, I took a swat at it. It floated lifelessly to the counter where it landed feet up. I celebrated my victory with James. He was excited that I had managed to kill it because it had been bothering him all night. I walked back over to it to dispose of it's dead body when I realized it was gone! I looked around and saw it on my mirror, very much alive. I picked up one of those little medicine cups that comes with your cough syrup and trapped the fly underneath the cup. Again I was amazed at my quick skills, not killing it this time, but capturing it. James scooped it up between his hand and the cup and gave it a good shake, thinking this would kill the fly. When he released his hand from the cup, the fly took off flying! We managed to capture it alive again and this time James threw it into the sink and turned on the water. The fly managed to hold on to the drain with all it's might! Thinking we had drowned it sufficiently, James turned off the water. The fly started crawling up the side of the sink! We turned the water on again, pushed the fly into the drain and plugged it! Hours later we unplugged the drain fully expecting the fly to come rushing out at us. We never saw it again.

There is another fly in my room this morning. It's probably the same one.

Can you Feel It?

2009-09-08T09:00:00.000-07:00

Before I get to the point of this particular post, I jut wanted to share one of our favorite pictures with you. I was actually digging for other pictures from last year to share when I came across this one. I especially love the one shoe. Moving on...

It's almost OCTOBER! It is, hands down, my favorite month of the year. I'm not sure why exactly. I love the change in weather, and I love the Halloween decorations. I love that it means that Thanksgiving and Christmas are right around the corner. I anticipate October the way kids anticipate Christmas. I've already been to Target specifically to scope out Halloween decor. I do it the first week of every September. I already have cute Halloween outfits for Lizzy and Logan, and they have already worn them. Did I mention that I love October?

Do you see the creepy man hanging out in one of the upper windows? We know the decorations are cheesy and amateur, but the kids give us lots of compliments when they come trick or treating!

Stop by our house October 1st to check out this years Halloween decorations!

Self Fullfilling Prophecy

2009-09-04T08:32:00.000-07:00

Last night was our ward enrichment night. We had an activity that I'm sure sounded less than desirable to many women, including myself: sewing school bags. (Thanks to all that came!) I tried my best to make it known to all that were there that I was the last person that should sit in front of a sewing machine. I do know what I'm doing, kind of, but I'm notorious for breaking any sewing machine that I've ever been allowed to use for any extended period of time. The activity had been going for over an hour and I realized that not many people were that anxious to use the sewing machines, so not much was getting accomplished. I sucked it up and sat down in front of a brand new sewing machine, owned by the church. I was feeling encouraged that I got so much sewn while sitting there! I did run out of bobbin thread though, so under the instruction of one more knowledgeable than myself, (Christina) I was able to refill the bobbin and put it back in the machine.

Nothing else was sewn on that machine for the rest of night. I broke it. Somehow.

Cheerios and Demos

2009-09-03T08:17:00.000-07:00

You may think that this is a picture of James modeling his work outfit. (He works for a company called Pioneer, a Comcast contractor. Now you know their motto.) Anyway, this picture is really just proof that we live with a baby. While James was on the computer I noticed a cheerio stuck to his shirt! It gave me a good laugh.

This video was taken last night.

After we put that massive hole in our wall Logan was obsessed with hanging out up there on the ledge. For the rest of the night we kept telling him, "don't fall"! Every night around 10:00 we wake him up to go to the bathroom one last time. When I got him up last night the first thing he said was "don't fall"! I guess we got the message through to him.

Don't worry, we've blocked the ledge off so he can't fall.