Thursday, June 21, 2012

Here and There

Memorial Day picnic in the living room, watching The Adventures of Tin Tin:
 Love the Johnny Jump Up. This is the one my mom used to put my siblings and me in, I believe. It's holding up really well, especially considering it's over three decades old. When we put this contraption up, it has to be a heavily supervised activity. Because of Cole.
 Hooray for big boxes! The kids helped me make a little playhouse. We had a great time putting it together, and the kids had a great time playing with and abusing it for a week.
 Paige offered moral support while we worked on it:
She likes to pull up her dresses and suck on them. Same dress, same situation in the Memorial Day picture up above. :)
 Tessa did a great job decorating, while Cole did a great job testing out the durability of the place.

Thursday, June 14, 2012

Blurg

Postpartum hair loss: Your body is finally kicking it into gear, finding its new normal, feeling pretty good, and then -SUCKER PUNCH!

Sunday, June 10, 2012

Happy 8th Anniversary!

I love this man:
 I'm a lucky woman to have him as my husband. He sure makes me happy.
We had great adventures before we were married that, I feel, eventually led us to each other. Eight years later, we've shared our own countless adventures together (including three big ones named Tessa, Cole, and Paige). And now, we look forward to many more wonderful things to come. 
As far as my Jacob is concerned, my cup runneth over.

A few pictures of us through the years below. We might need to be more conscientious about taking pictures of ourselves together. We've got a million of the kids, but we should include ourselves too, sometimes. :)
Here we are married a year, stopping in London after our Kenya adventure to see The Lion King: (Those are some long spikes, Jake --in desperate need of a haircut...)
Washington DC:
Snowshoeing:
 Race for the Cure (pregnant with Tessa):
Our family's big England trip:

 Murder mystery party time (pregnant with Paige):
 Hooray for us!



Friday, June 8, 2012

Fathers and Sons Campout

Our stake's Fathers and Sons campout was close by this year, so Jake and Cole headed over for the evening to share dinner and have s'mores.... and then come right back on home to sleep in their beds with the air conditioner on. Maybe they'll be ready next year to stay the night with the croaking frogs. Cole calls the whole experience "the campfire", so we know what he remembers best about it, right?

 They explored, chased little frogs, stared at the fire, and made and munched s'mores with friends.
And Cole got bitten by chiggers. Blech. Poor kid. He hasn't once complained about it, though, and overall had an awesome time with Daddy.

Panther Preschool Picnic

Tessa's preschool career finished at the end of May with a final morning potluck picnic. It was wiiiindy, which made for an uncomfortable and shorter party, but it's nice to have an event to close out the year.
The kids played on the park playground and ate, then at the end Ms. M. had the kids perform some songs for the parents. 
This preschool at the high school has students from three to five. You can see where Tessa is on that spectrum, almost a head taller. Her friend Izzy is almost her exact age but decided she didn't want any part of the performing and hung out down by the pond instead. (As her teacher said, as much as they've loved preschool, they are definitely ready for kindergarten.) Cole, however, did want to be a part of it and smooshed his way into the line.
Both kids had eaten a chocolate iced donut beforehand and had chocolate beards. One of the high school students pointed this out to me before the singing started and I just smiled. I thought it would add to the pictures. Apparently she didn't think so and must have cleaned her face right before. So, she and Cole would have had awesome matching choco beards, but whatever. 
For the life of me I can't get Blogger to be nice and upload the videos of them singing and closer up (and Cole pretending he belongs), so there was my one picture. :) 

Monday, June 4, 2012

Nursery Decor

I don't decorate our babies' rooms elaborately. It's not that I don't love all the fun stuff out there; it's that nursery decor gets pushed way down the list on our budget and it just isn't important enough to me to get all worked up about. With that said, it's nice to have some stuff up to try to pull a room together, even as loosely as I do. And if I can hand craft it cheaply, well, there you go! 
Grandma M. made Paige a lovely quilt, as she does all the grandbabies. She gave me some of the leftover material. The first day I took a glance at Pinterest, I saw a flower picture project using fabric. I could do something like that. So I did.
I grabbed some extra fabric, cut out some petal shapes, painted a canvas brown, and then hooray for Mod Podge! 
 In a Crafty Chat and Chocolate activity we had for Relief Society, I chose to  make the Butterfly Mobile.  I have this "floating" above the crib by fishline.
 There is another little craft I have in mind that I will get to eventually. A framed papercraft thing. Until then, it's nice to have a couple of decorations to tie in with Paige's bedding. And even if it's not what we'd call fabulous, all that matters is that Paige likes it (and I feel like I put forth some kind of effort for her).

She looks happy to me!