A Plug

I was just thinking about it and I have to say that I have some really talented friends. So many of them are crafty and/or artistic. I though I would blog and let you all know what they do. I'll start going down my blog roll.

Ashley (Aloha Ashley) is crafty and she has an ETSY shop you can check out here. She is a quilter and makes these cute little poppy bobby pins, which I have been meaning to get. She also is a writer for a craft blog you can check out here.

Sarah (Baillio Babe) is a hair stylist. She is up in the Malibu area, so if you are looking for someone to do your hair up in LA, you can check her out. She is a real sweetheart!

Amy (Brady Clan) is quite the photograph. She took the pictures of the kids on my sidebar. She is taking more this Saturday and I am excited! You can check out her cute photo blog here.

Chelsea (C me Rust) is a hair stylist. She is also one of my bestest friends. She has been doing my hair for me for years now. She is living in Utah, but comes down every month to do hair for all of her clients in CA. She works out of a salon in Huntington Beach and is a doll!

Debbie (Coordinated Girl) and her husband are business savvy people. They not only own Schooled Magazine, which circulates in the Provo/Orem area, but they opened up a shop in the Spectrum. It is called Fusion of Ideas and they sell covers for electronics and other accessories. They are right across from the Apple store if you are looking.

Allyson (Didlake Days) runs Heritage Flowers from home. She specializes in weddings and I have seen her work. She is amazing!

Cecily (Mangum Madness) has a jewelry business. She makes these cute little metal plates and puts funny sayings on them. My favorite has to be the keychain that says Meanest Mom Ever! You can check her site out here.

Melissa (Melissa Multiplies) is a crafty girl and started up her own baby boutique online. All of her products are handmade by her. You can check out her cute stuff here!

Summer (Summer Lovin') is a stylist. She is currently the stylist for David Archuleta. Yes, THE David Archuleta. She is really great at what she does. He is always looking good and so is she obviously!

Amy (Walking with the Walkers) is a digital artist. She makes the cutest announcements, invitations, holiday cards, etc. You send her a picture and pick a layout or have one customized and she sends it back to you , so you can print as many or as few as you want. You can see her cute site here. Oh, and you have to check out her pop art. I still want to have one made for my kids. Adorable!

I think that is all. I hope I haven't missed anyone and if I have, I am sorry. You will just have to shoot me an e-mail and let me know so I can plug your business too! Soon I will plug my own business on here. Watch out for Buttercup Bows (I think that is what I will call it)! I hope to get it up and running in the next month. I need to start up with eBay and I hope to eventually have my own site if they are successful!

Biggest fans

I don't know many girls who have a great body image. I think we all have our insecurities. If you don't, then go you! My boys are my biggest fans and they always seem to boost my self image. The other week I went over to parents house to go into the spa with the kids. This meant I would be putting on a bathing suit for the first time since having Brooklyn. I was feeling a bit nervous about it, but I had a cute new bathing suit, so I decided to go for it. I got myself all changed and right when Micah sees me he says, "You're amazing!" That was all I needed to hear. That gave me confidence and I enjoyed my time in the spa with them. Then the other night we were watching E! and Bridget's Sexiest Beaches was on (nothing else was on apparently) and as Chad was watching he says to me, "You two have similar bodies." Wow, I wasn't expecting to hear that one! I know that I have nowhere near as nice a body as she has, but I will take the compliment and keep it. Also, I will try to forget the fact that Chad has vision problems. it has obviously worked out in my favor! By the way, I wouldn't recommend trying to find a picture of her on the internet. I saw way more of her than I wanted to!
Anyways, I thought I would put some random polls up on the blog because they are fun. So feel free to vote!

I'm seeing a theme here...

...the theme is no luck in the housing department! Well, we are looking and looking and we only have three more to see, since I think we have seen almost every available housing in our price range within southern Orange County! I think I would like to land in Laguna Niguel. We only lived there a short while before, but I loved how fun and young the ward was, the cooler summer temperatures (not to mention sea breeze) and the city in general with so many things available. So for right now we are continuing to look. We seem to find the best homes in the worst (read ghetto) neighborhoods and then the ugliest (read money pit) homes in the best neighborhoods. We aren't looking for perfection, but I think more than anything else, I want it to feel like home and I want it to be our home for at least five years. So, even though we are feeling very rushed with a move out date of May 18th looming over our heads, we still want to find the right place for us to settle for a while. It is so much harder with kids that are approaching school age. You really have to check out what the schools are like and see if their are kids in the neighborhood to play with. If only I had all the time in the world (as well as all the money), then I could find just the right place. So, we might be looking again tomorrow. Cross your fingers for us, we need to find our next home!

News around here

So a lot of things have been going on and I haven't been so good at keeping updated. I have been so busy. Some of it has been fun busy and the rest not so much. I have been trying to get Chad to do another random blog picture update just because it would give me more time to get around to blogging myself.

Well, the kids are growing and changing so fast. Brooklyn is officially 11 months and she is the fastest crawler and an ambitious walker. She loves to walk, but she wants to go fast, so it often ends up being a dive. You might have noticed that in the video below. She is SO proud of herself when she takes a few steps. She has a huge smile and usually screams in delight when she is successful. She also is starting to get a few words. She has had "mom" for a while, but that was edged out by "dada" pretty fast. Now she says "uh oh" everywhere we go. She says it first thing in the morning when she wakes up and here and there when we are out. It is so stinking cute!By the way, she hates the grass....and how scary is it that she already poses for the camera?

Micah is my big boy that cracks me up. He says the funniest things. Just yesterday when we were at the mall he was watching people walk by and said, "Does everyone has bums?" "Do you haves a bum?" "I have a bum!" He will also turn things around on me. He can be a sassy pants. "You better," is one I have heard lately and "do you understand me?" I have to say that sometimes when he says things like "crap" I have a hard time not laughing. He is getting big and starting to outgrow naps, which makes me sad. I am still trying to get them in when I can, but when I can't we have quiet time with a movie. It gives me a little time to myself (or just to clean).Micah in his element with cars, cars and more cars....he doesn't look like a toddler anymore!

Looks like I am a runner too now. I have been meaning to get myself active, but I didn't think it would happen this way. Val was in town this weekend and if any of you know her, you know how contagious her enthusiasm is. She could talk you into running through the mall half naked and singing the Eye of the Tiger! She got all excited about running and somehow I got myself roped into running a 5K next month and a 10K in July. So, the last few days I have been out every night trying to increase my stamina which is pretty sad right now. All I can think of right now is I hope they allow you to walk in part of the race and at least I will get to wear cute pink knee high socks!

the house hunt continues. We are now desperately searching for a new place. Our time here is running out quickly and we still don't have a place. It seems like even when we think we have found a good place, the rug gets pulled from under us. For instance, one place we looked at was already sold when we were looking at it. Another was a misprint in the price, then there is the place that we went and put a bid on, but it has a tenant with a lease that goes to the end of January. Hmmm, so not much luck here for now, but we are going to keep looking and hope that we find one that feels like home. That is what I am looking for right now. Also, as part of our new endeavor to be home owners, we realized that our budget wouldn't work for us the way it does now, so I am getting a part-time job. I am applying at Baby Gap right now. If I get it, my kids will be incredibly dressed at all times, but there might not be food in the cupboards. just kidding, sort of!

Cured sort of

From the last post, I was told to look up sleep paralysis. That has to be it! I read it and it seems to make total sense. Apparently I wake during REM cycles every once in a while!

Physiological or ...

Way back in high school I had this weird experience. I decided to take a nap in the middle of the day. I remember I had a nightmare and woke up suddenly. I don't remember the details of the night mare, but I remember when I woke up, I couldn't move or speak. I was wide awake and was unable to move any part of my body or to open my mouth. It is the scariest feeling to try with everything you have to scream and not have even a slight sound come out. I was so freaked out and after a minute or two of trying to move and speak tears started falling. I still laid there silently hoping someone would come in the room or something. Another two or three minutes went by and finally I was able to move my arms and legs and my mouth began to move. As soon as I could I went running down stairs and told my family what happened. Very weird. Well, last night Chad had a guys night and since I don't like being at home alone with the kids at night, I headed over to my moms to have a sleepover so Chad could stay out as long as he wanted. Well, the night was insane with Brooklyn. She wasn't a happy camper in a new environment. Finally, around 3:30 in the morning, Brooklyn fell asleep with my mom and I headed into my brother's old room (which was mine before that) and curled up on the bed to sleep. I was woke up about a half hour later. The bed was squeaking and it felt like there was someone jumping on the bed right by my knees. I opened my eyes and no one was there. The squeaking stopped along with the jumping, but I couldn't move or speak. I was freaked out by what just happened and was trying to call out, but nothing was happening. Luckily, this time it took only about two minutes before I could move or speak. At that point, I went running into my moms room and hopped into bed. I was thoroughly freaked out! I keep trying to tell myself that this can be explained. Maybe the lack of muscle control is because I woke so suddenly that my body didn't wake with it? The jumping on the bed, I am hoping I just imagined (please let it be my imagination!) I don't know. Has anyone else had an experience like that? My mom swears her house is haunted and now I think I believe her, unless someone can explain this to me!

Eleven months and almost walking!

A New Meaning to Spring Cleaning

I got a phone call yesterday that the close of escrow on this house is May 18th! What? We have a month to pack and move. Where to? I haven't a clue yet. We have been looking, but in kind of a passive mode. Now that we have this news, I think it lit a bit of a fire under our butts! So, this years spring cleaning will be a lot more thorough than usual. I will be cleaning, organizing, decluttering and selling off some items. I am not looking forward to making our fifth move in as many years. I have a feeling at this point, that we will have to move into my parents for a couple of weeks until we can get into a place of our own. This means we will have to move twice and live out of boxes for a while. Pleasant! My poor parents, they always seem to have a revolving door at their house. Just when they think they will have an empty nest, another kid (or two or four) comes back! At this point, I think they wouldn't know what to do if they really were empty nesters. Anyways, on the bright side of this all, we have a place to go. The move will make us more organized and help us to get rid of things that we really don't need. Also, we will finally find a place of our own and once we find it, we will be planting our butts there for the next five years or so. Unless we suddenly win the lottery, I plan on being nice and settled for a while and really making the place our own. Getting the kids into school and making it our first stepping stone in the real estate ladder. I think taking that perspective is keeping me calm for now. Besides that, we have always been blessed. We always seem to land on our feet no matter what, so I know things will work out for us just fine and i just have to have faith in that!

Yay me!

So here are a few quick pictures from Easter morning. We were about 10 minutes late, so we grabbed the camera and decided to take pictures right outside. Just then my family pulled up, so they joined in. By the way, that is the dress that Chad got for me. I think he did a great job and I have never been so comfortable in my Easter dress in my life. Thanks babe!
Here is what I really wanted to post about. Thanks Amy for giving me that little push I needed to try it. I have been wanting to try to paint and I finally went for it, so here is my first painting. I like how it turned out. Not bad for using the cheapest brush at Michael's and wall paint. I don't know what I am going to do with it, but I am sure I will come up with something!

Early Easter

This year the Easter Bunny came early! Seeing as how we have 9:00 am church, I didn't think he would be able to get it together in time to have it before church and we have too much going on after, he decided today would work. While the kids were taking their bath, he ran through our house and dropped off some neat things.


Micah also had a fun time on his scavenger hunt. The Easter Bunny left him notes leading him around the house to find all of his eggs. He was giggling and saying "This is so good!"


Brooklyn wasn't all that impressed until she found the chocolate graham crackers in her eggs. Those didn't go over well and found their way onto mommy's shirt while out at Costco! She did love her new binkies though!


Just wanted to add in my new little craft. I had some things laying around house and created a bow board and made a few bows too. This week I plan on breaking out my new canvases and brush and try to paint a bit!

Growing up digitally

I don't plan on taking much time, but I've been thinking about this a lot recently and felt like getting it out of my mind so I can move on with my life.

I was listening to a podcast a few weeks ago in which the topic of discussion was how different it is for kids to grow up these days with the internet being such a large part of their lives. It's not just the interactivity and connectedness that makes it different, it's the fact that pretty much everything you do online is archived. Forever.

We all did some pretty dumb things when we were growing up, but we're lucky because these things only exist in our memories now. If a potential employer Googles my name, they won't see a video of me dancing like an idiot in my room or find pictures of me assembling an awesome pyrotechnics stunt. I did all that without technology innocently archiving it. But nowadays? Kids have to live with bad decisions for the rest of their lives. Take this kid for example:



Not exactly something I'd want on the first page of results. Here's another example:



I can't even make it all the way through this one, I feel too bad for the kid.

This topic resonated so well with me obviously due to the fact that I now have two small kids who will grow up in an even more connected and archive-centric age than what we've got now. I'm not sure how to address that. I suppose the most effective way to prevent something like this from happening to my own kids is to become a helicopter parent, but then wouldn't I be depriving my kids of their childhood? I mean, we all made mistakes as teenagers and it's part of what made us who we are. But should your mistakes haunt and follow you for the rest of your life because Google found it or because the Wayback Machine took a snapshot?

What about you, is your Facebook private or public? Do you comment on YouTube videos? Do you have a Twitter? If you have a unique/clever username as your online persona, what do you see if you Google it? What about if you just Google your real name? How do you gain control of what's shown in those results?

The bright side is the fact that online privacy is becoming an increasingly large issue and hopefully it will continue to get larger. I just need to figure out how to paint the big picture for my kids as they get older, hopefully before something like this happens:



(Bonus vocabulary: Feeling embarrassed on behalf of the people in these videos is known as "wahjah". The more you know!)

A dash of this and a dash of that....

Ok, I thought I would try to catch up a bit. First off, here are some random pictures. Brooklyn is our messy eater. Micah didn't like to get messy when he ate, but Brooklyn seems to moosh food into her mouth. She tries to get within proximity and then kid of rolls it around. Often she will end up with chunks shoved up her nose! So we end up in lots of baths after dinner. Sometimes they are in the sink...

Other times they are in the bath and she might get a minute or two on her own before Micah comes running in butt naked to join the fun!

Saturday my little brother got married. He and Michele got married at the Arroyo Trabuco Golf Course. It was a beautiful day and a beautiful wedding. I think they are a goo dmatch for each other and I wish them the best! here are some of the pictures of the day. Micah all dressed for his ringbearer duties and quickly emptying bottles of bubbles that were intended for the bride and grooms exit.

Still stealing bubbles, so we moved him outside.

Me and Brooklyn. She was on me 90% of the time!

I got a better shot of the two of them, but Brooklyns face in this just cracks me up! Chad says she looks like Chris Farley. Isn't she funny?

Micah and Shelby, she is growing up so fast and is just gorgeous!

Micah striking the GQ pose. He is such a handsome little dude!

Then he ran off and made friends with the golf caddies. He is everyone's friend!

That's it and I know you are thinking, where are the pictures of the bride and groom. Well, these were taken while they were getting ready and right before the ceremony started, Brooklyn fell asleep. She slept on me through the whole ceremony then when she woke up I was back and forth in pictures and juggling kids. When the reception started, I was trying to keep Brooklyn happy and keep an eye on Micah who was dancing with total strangers (he is a riot). Brooklyn ended up throwing up on herself, so she was naked by eight o'clock. That's the sign of a crazy party, right? Anyways, I just couldn't get any shots of them, but I am sure there are plenty coming!

Also, I promised an explaination of my poll, so here it goes....Having two kids is a lot of work as some of you know. Very tiring. I have also always been the type that needs sleep, so at the end of a long day of taking care of kids, cleaning house, making dinner, running errands, etc., I am really tired and not in the mood to fool around. We got to the point where we decided to compromise and get on a schedule (we are so spontaneous!) so that there wouldn't be any issues. I talked to a few of my friends about it and they said that they have sex far less often than what our schedule calls for. This was just two friends though and I wanted to know if that was the norm. Basically, I was trying to get out of having it as often as we were. I need more sleep! Anyways, I put up the anonymous poll asking how often people have sex. As the days went by and more people voted the majority said that they have it at least twice a week. Total backfire! Chad was very satisfied with the results. Other friends have told me that they think people aren't being honest on the poll. I think most of my poll takers have one child or less, which explains the energy. Well, I guess good for you and all your energy. Maybe next time I will have to send out an e-mail to my friends before I put up a poll to throw the vote in my favor!

Zesty

When I was in high school I was a busy girl and I loved it. I did seminary in the morning, then school, did at least one sport and at least one job in addition to a social life. Now things are just as busy, but not necessarily fun. I spend all my day managing the kids, doing chores and running errands. By the end of my day, I am exhausted and feel like everything I got done that day will just have to be redone the next day. I also know I am going to have to deal with Brooklyn again. Don't get me wrong, she has her swet moments and they are getting longer in length, but for the most part, she is high maintenance. She needs to be held, fed, cuddled, played with, entertained, napping, seeing me, touching me or hearing me to be happy. Otherwise, she will just whine and complain all day. I feel like in the mean time, I have lost my zest for life. That excitement that I used to have at the beginning of the day seems to be dwindling. I remember waking up and wondering what was ahead of me for the day, who I would see and what I would experience. Now, things are so predictable that I am bored. I wouldn't say I am depressed, but I am not as happy as I used to be. I feel like I get through each day rather than really live it and enjoy the moment. Chad has decided I need a hobby. I think I need more than a hobby, I need to find a passion. I have some hobbies. I enjoy doing crafty things, scrapbooking (rarely now), etc. What I am looking for is something more than just a fun little activity. I want to find something I really love to do. Something that will get me excited to do the next day and find out more about. Chad says I will start to enjoy being a mother again in about two years. Well, I hope this will help make that time a little more fun for all of us. So please tell me what you have a passion for and do not tell me it is raising kids, even if it is. That will just make me feel bad. Don't get me wrong, I love love love my kids. I think I have actually devoted myself to them more than I should because I have lost myself in the mix. So here I am on my quest to find a passion. Please let me know what yours is and how you found it. I need to find something just for me to make me fell like my own person again!

On a side note, Chad gave me some money to get some things I have been eyeing lately. Well, in reality, most have been necessities. Like this:

My old bathingsuit became see through right under the boobs. Totally not the look I am going for, so to the trash it goes and I will get to enjoy taking the kids to the beach in this cute little number. If you are looking for a cute and modest suit, I would recommend checking out layersclothing.com, limericki.com or hapari.com. Happy shopping! Also, I got myself some really cute leopard shoes by Guess for the wedding. I had to go to Laguna Hills Mall to pick up part of Micah's outfit for the wedding and decided to see if I could find some shoes there. I went into this little shop callen Milano Shoes and I found these (I realize the photo is cheesey):


20 bucks! I love when I find a good bargain!

P.S. Next post I will explain the poll. I promise!

Open minds

I belong to a mom's group in the area that is a lot of fun. We are always out together taking our kids to activities or doing crafts. We have a blast and the best part is that the other moms are great. They are all so different and just all around great people. Last night we had a mom's night out and met up at Starbuck's. I grabbed a hot cocoa and two other moms showed up shortly there after. We got cozy in their big leather seats and started to chat. Our topics turned to the big three no-nos, you know, the topics that you shouldn't discuss in mixed company: sex, religion and politics. Usually, that is where I get uncomfortable. I get a little anxious, especially when it comes to religion. I am so used to people attacking or belittling me for my beliefs that I feel like I ready myself for it now. This was a totally different situation. These ladies were the kindest, most opened minded, understanding and inquisitive people. It was so nice to be able to just ask questions back and forth between friends. We talked for hours and ended up closing the place. Where did the time go? Between a Catholic, Mormon and Jew, we had a great discussion and a ton of fun. See, it can be done civily. I feel like I have some of the best friends in the world. Some of the time I don't even have to look for them. It is like God just puts them right in front of me!