Girls Trip 2011

It's here! It's finally here! Girls Trip 2011 and I am headed out this morning. This year is a little different - we are road tripping in California. L.A., Long Beach, San Diego, we're even going to take a trip to the SD Temple! It's a small group this year - Rhonda got a new job in Atlanta last month and can't join us and Carla is also out (so not awesome). Kate, Sara, Sheila and I will miss them but we are determined to have a ball. And honestly, how can you NOT have a good time with all of us? I have to finish cleaning up the house and do some last minute packing before I hit the road - California here I come!

Busy Week

What a week I'm having! Strawberry Days in PG is awesome/super crazy. I so look forward to it, but my goodness it's just gogogo! The weekend before the big shebang, Cody ran the Utah Valley Marathon with the rest of the Fire Dept. Remember how we ran it together last year? Yeah well, I wised up and opted out this time around. Here he is at the finish line:

Doesn't he look great? Doesn't he look like he didn't just run 26.2 miles? Not only did he do that, he also shaved 30 minutes off his time from last year! Mr. Indcredible!

Cody also just got hired on at Saratoga Springs Fire working part time. He's only worked a few shifts, but so far he really likes it. And speaking of far, do you have any idea how far away S.S. is? I mean it is OUT there, peeps. Waaaaay out there. I almost need to pack provisions before trekking out there for a visit. But I digress... with this new job means more time away from home. He worked an extra shift last week which meant I saw him for about 45 minutes total. When he got off work Wednesday night we took the boys over to the carnival and met up with our friends Mike and Michelle. The kids were having a complete blast!

Bless Cole's little heart, he was getting over strep...but he was making the most of it!

The next afternoon we stopped at the carnival for a few rides. This dragon roller coaster was their favorite, their faces were hilarious.

Saturday morning was the parade and it was the first time Cody was able to watch it with me! It's your typical parade with bands and beauty queens, but the boys loved every second.

So, so many rodeo queens. I have no idea who the first two chicks are... maybe Arabian Princesses?

This kids were laughing so hard at this inflatable can guy.

We got some friends to take the boys to the carnival (yes, again) while Cody and I grabbed some lunch. Then that evening we got on top of the fire station to watch the fireworks.

Strawberry Days is really so much fun, but I'm a little relieved that it's over - I need to save up some energy for the 4th of July!

Father's Day

Dear Cody,

Thank you for being the most wonderful Dad to our little boys! You are an incredible example to our sons and they love you and admire you so much. You are their hero. I feel so, so lucky to be raising a family with you! I hope you have the most amazing Father's Day, you deserve nothing less. Your little carbon copies love you!

See? Aren't we lucky?

We love you - HAPPY FATHER'S DAY!

Inmaterial

Friends? I don't have patience. I sort of do, but not generally. Ironic, considering I'm usually always late and am easily distracted by shiny things. My amount of patience is largely determined by my mood, of course. If I have to be somewhere, have a million things to do and/or I have two crazy boys with me, patience has moved to another state and the back of my neck starts to sweat the longer I have to wait. I overreact and don't see logic too clearly. Like this story I'm about to tell you? It's obvious that I am freaking out over nothing really, so remember to laugh.

Case in point: today at JoAnn's. I want to have a dress made by the brilliant Gloria to take on my girls trip next week. Next week! While Gloria assured me that she'll have plenty of time to construct said dress, I still wanted to get the fabric to her asap. After dropping Cody off at the gym, I raced over to JoAnn's to quickly pick out some material and (hopefully) drop it off at Gloria's before racing home to put my Costco groceries in the fridge (what?).

The first 8 minutes of my trip are marvy - I'm cruising through the aisles, the boys are doing great and I find some awesome orange material that just might work for my dress. I call my Mom to ask her a sewing question and as we're chatting I pick out the liner, pull a number for the cutting table, find a zipper and some thread and start to wait my turn. I hang up with my Mom, the number at the cutting table was 58, mine was 64. I take the boys to the bathroom, then go back to wait. Now they're at number 59. Hmm, taking a while. This is where I start to panic and get upset. They had 1 person at the cutting table who was older and clueless, not to mention just chatting it up with the woman she was 'helping'. Finally another employee comes over to help and the woman she calls up has two carts FULL of fabric bolts. And she didn't even know how many yards she needed from each one! No, no she had to consult her 11 year old daughter about that. "honey...what's this for? You want this for your pillow? And why do we have this one....honey?" (11 year old daughter was also watching her 2 year old sister, therefore she was never in the same spot, therefore my patience was packing it's bags).

Oh, and the little number counter dealio on the ceiling? That tells you which number they were on? Yeah, they weren't updating that. So it stayed at 59 forever. Finally ANOTHER employee comes over to help (since there was like 9 of us waiting) and calls out, "Number 60?" Someone in the line informs her that they are past 60. Again, she calls "60?".

They are past 60. I chime in, "The woman at the table is number 61."

"Ok, so no 60?" I tell you what, you call for 60 one more time and I'm gonna set my hair on fire.

Then she calls out, "ok, 61?" Um, they are already helping number 61. Remember when I said that? Yeah. Finally number 62 gets up there, but they still don't update the counter dealio. Of course not, why would they. At this point there 3 women at the cutting counter, none of them being efficient or considerate of the rest of us waiting, they are chatting and slowing folding the material and gushing over each other's projects with, "Oh, how darling!" and "You're so brave to sew your own duvet!". I just need my fabric cut. For the love of all that's holy.

It's been 20 minutes. Somewhere between the slowness, the sweatiness, the 'captain me planet'-ness and general 'I'll cut your material when I'm good and ready' mentality, I'd had it. I pushed my cart in an aisle and got myself to the nearest exit before I went completely postal on this store. I mean, really people!?! That store is like riding a big wheel through molasses. GOOD LAWS. I had been there for an hour - and hour I and my costco butter did not have. I tried to rationalize what happened: "Maybe that older lady was new...it's not like they can make people hurry up and only get 3 bolts cut at once...they were just trying to be nice to their customers...they have no way to determine how long each customer will take...". But I got over that real quick and called my Mom to complain and threatened to open my own fabric store that has a self-serve cutting table, not to mention an express lane. Gah.

Today I will go out once again to find some fabric for my dress. I'll calmy walk in and grab a number for the cutting table before I do anything else. I will be going to another store, of course...I'd sooner die than step foot in that JoAnn's again.

Fact:

I met Cody exactly 10 years ago today.

Best. Decade. Ever.

Bug Juice

When I was little my Grandpa called soy sauce 'Bug Juice'. Why? He felt that if you squished a bunch of bugs, that's what it would look like. Naturally, this made all of us laugh hysterically. "Bug juice! Grandpa wants bug juice!"

Tonight for dinner I planned on making teriyaki chicken. After getting started, I realized I was out of teriyaki sauce. I hate that, don't you? When you start making a dinner only to find half way through that you don't have all the ingredients? No? Just me? I'm the only one who forgets to check? Moving on.. so in my panic I think, "Ok, I can add some onions and ginger...maybe some garlic? Still give it an asian flare.." Whilst looking in the fridge I spot some soy sauce. Bam! I can use that! Ahhh, even better - I'll call it bug juice and my kids will think it's hilarious and eat every bite of their dinner.

So I finish up and it smells really good, I toss some bug juice on the top and bring it to my boys. I tell them the story of 'bug juice' and they laaaaauuuugh and think it's so funny. In my proud mommy moment I decide to call this dinner 'Bug Juice Chicken' and we'll eat it all the time because it will be so good, blah blah blah. We all take a bite... and it's nasty. I mean, it was fine? But nothing noteworthy. I mean, the whole thing didn't make ANY sense. Dinner fail. We scrapped it and I made sandwiches.

I still want to master 'Bug Juice Chicken', I just don't want it to taste like bug juice.

Summer is here!!

And just in time, I must say. The weather has FINALLY turned warm and balmy - thank you, June! This was a tough Spring. It was cold and wet (so much rain) and not awesome. Fortunately things are started to dry out and bloom - I'm all about it.

Cache had his Kindergarten graduation and tons of activities during the last week of school. There was a dance festival a few days before school got out and Cache was super stoked about it. Each grade danced to a song, here is Cache stomping away to 'Step In Time'.

It's sort of customary to give a teacher a gift on the last day of school, right? I'm new to this whole thing, so I wasn't sure what to do. But I saw this idea somewhere and embellished it a little. I love how it turned out! And it probably took me a whole 30 minutes to put it together, so great.

Cache was super excited to give it to her and even made a sweet little card to go along with it. He's in this weird phase where he doesn't really know how to smile for pictures...I swear, no matter how many times I try to get a good shot, he makes this goofy forced smile. Sigh.

That Friday Andrea was in town for a race, so I got to spend the day with her and my Mom and Jess. We lunched with Marty and then hit some of our favorite stores. I introduced Andrea to Decades where she scored a sweet tooled leather bag - I swear, she finds the coolest stuff. All afternoon we shopped, our last stop was at a consignment store called Home Again. We split off and perused some of their cool wares, and then I saw it - I saw this beautiful piece leaning against the wall...a gorgeous, velvet tufted headboard.

MINE!

It will be mine. I must admit, when I first saw it I didn't love the color. I was like, "Peach? Really?" But I walked over and looked at it closer, convinced it was probably for a Queen size bed. To my surprise? It's a California King size. Win!! And the price? $145. I know. MINE. Small snag, friends - I didn't dare buy it without checking with Cody, so I talked to the owners and they said I could just call and pay for it over the phone if it was still available. To my delight, Cody is on board! I was surprised, I must be honest. I mean, a peach headboard? Really? Tough guy Cody likes it? He's sort of given me cart blanche on decorating the bedroom, so I'm all over it. I called the store this morning and left a message - fingers crossed that I get it!!

In other Summer news, we decided as a family to make a Summer To Do list with all the fun things we want to do. Here is a rough draft:

What other things should I put on there? This doesn't involve some trips Cody and I are planning (Lake Powell) and trips with my family (Lake Powell again), the girls trip and stuff like that, but I need some more ideas of fun stuff to do with our little family. So spill! And Happy Summer!

Projects

The weather is FINALLY starting to warm up, which means it's time for some serious doing! There are so many things we want to get done this Summer - lots of painting and building and just plain doing.

For starters, I painted this cute little table blue. It was a cool green color, but I wanted it to sort of play off the huge ikea map we got for the wall in the living room. Now, I should state (if I haven't before) that I hate prep work. This is not a good thing. Prep work is essential, but I am so eager for the end result that I sometimes just start something before really taking the time to prep it. Sometimes it comes out just fine, other times you can tell that I hurried.

I lightly sanded the table, wiped it down and got to painting. I chose 'Aqua', it's such a bright happy color. I was getting a few coats on, loving it...

The top tier is totally smooth and awesome, but the lower level kept looking a little rough. That's when I thought, "OH yeah, I can unscrew the table so it's easier to paint..." See? Prep work fail. After I removed the top I sprayed and sprayed and sprayed...and it's still not 100% smooth. But my can of paint was gone, so was my patience with this piece, it looks great and bam - she's done.

Perfect! Other Living Room projects? Putting up our rock wall! We're going to dry stack these rocks on the North wall behind the piano...
I'm SO excited. It will be a lot of work, but look rad when it's done! And it should give me enough time to paint my piano. Yes. Paint my piano. What color?

Saffron! Mmm, a dull, mustard-y piano. All laquered and shiny? Stoked.

I finally bought paint for my buffet - a luscious color called 'Lagoon'.

It's the exact shade I wanted and looks so great against the green in our kitchen. I fixed a bent hinge on one of the doors, so now I just need to sand the buffet and get it ready to paint!

Cody and I have spent the last two days working on our front yard. We weeded our flower beds and ripped out some old stumps, planted some new flowers...ugh, so much work. I was feeling pretty proud of myself as I pulled out two stumps using the 4-wheeler. "I totally have this." I wrapped the chain around the 3rd (and biggest) stump, hooked it up and started to pull. The 4-wheeler was spinning a little, but I could feel the roots getting looser and I heard a snap. Then I saw water pouring out of the ground. That's when panic ensued. I ran in the back and grabbed Cody, then shut the water off. What did I do? I snapped the elbow section of our spiget. Nice.

After a quick run to Home Depot, Cody helped me repair it and now it's as good as new. So yeah, feeling pretty awesome at first, then was re-introduced to some serious humbleness.

It's been nice working so hard the past couple of days, and now it's time to take it easy for the weekend! My sister is in town, Cache's last day of school is tomorrow, Summer is here! Still lots of yard projects to do, but at least all the stumps are out. Well, most of them...I'll let Cody tackle the rest.