Crafty-ness

A little while ago, my mother-in-law taught me how to make homemade cards. I learned how to make them about 6 months ago, and I've been doing it whenever I have the time, but I never thought about taking pictures of them. So, I decided that I had made some that I liked and thought I would take pictures of them, since I send them off and don't see them again.

These are a few cards I made for Uriah's 2nd birthday party. I had some left over zoo stickers from scrapbooking and some car stickers and used those to embellish the cards.

These are some cards I finished last night. I have been putting them together in separate weekends. One weekend I will cut the paper into the sizes that I need, then a week or two down the road I will put them together, and then in another week I will find things to embellish them with. That's how long it takes to make cards when you work full time and have to take care of kids and clean a house (^_^)

I made these cards for my sister-in-law. She liked these papers the best out of the book she gave me so I thought I would make her birthday card with them.

I had fun going through the flowers I bought and putting different colors on top of different colors.

Three days ago we took Uriah to the Pioneer Day Parade. We had some family build a float for the parade and we went to see them. They threw so much candy at us that we might as well have taken Uriah trick-or-treating again.

This is Jordyn relaxing on the floor. She likes to drink her bottle lying down, but she frequently rolls over and plays with her bottle when she is done eating.

This is Jordyn at the parade. I bought that stinkin' cute hat for her in Sun Valley while we were up camping that way. I think it looks great on her.

My sister has been babysitting for us while Jared is taking summer classes, and she taught Uriah how to help with the dishes. He stands by the sink with a measuring cup and a toothbrush and pretends to scrub the cup. He loves to do it, and I love having him by my side.

Uriah is showing off the moose that we bought him in Sun Valley after our camping trip.

Uriah and Jordyn having dinner. They were both being really silly and making faces while mom was taking pictures.

My little messy-faced girl. "Don't wipe my face, daddy!"

Now that I'm passed all the pictures, I can do an update. Jordyn has had a cough for more than a month and I took her in to the doctor's for the 3rd time and they said she could have something viral, a sort of "walking pneumonia", and they prescribed her an antibiotic. The doctor said it may or may not work, but basically this cough just doesn't want to go away and we have to let it run it's course. Uriah and Jordyn had their 2 year and 6 month check-ups last week and they are both perfectly healthy (aside from Jordyn's cough). Uriah is 30 pounds and Jordyn is 18. They grow so fast! I can't believe how quickly Jordyn went from being a tiny thing in my arms to a chunky monkey that can sit up and is almost crawling. Thank heavens for cameras or I would never remember those precious moments.

We will be moving in less than a month and I am getting excited. We will be moving to a place that is 3 bedrooms, much more sq. footage than where we are now, and it has a garage. I am excited for that because I am tired of our balconies always being covered with bikes or junk that we don't use. Hooray for garages! Well, I can't think of any more updates for now. Until next time!

Fun Stories

Sometimes in life, weird things just seem to happen. They happen for no apparent reason and seem to be somewhat random.

Well, a few days ago, I had one of these random things happen to me...

...I was driving to my mother's house to go visit her. I was probably going only 10-15 mph because I was getting ready to stop at a 4 way stop intersection. There were some black cords strung tightly across the road, which I had learned a while ago were there because that is how the city keeps track of how much traffic is on a particular road. I had driven over these things countless times before and had no worries about doing so again. Well, I drove over them and the next thing I heard was a loud POP and then a thudthudthudthud. It was coming from the back passenger side of my car. That tire had been low on air for a while and little naive me just thought that perhaps it had gone flat. I pulled over, turned on my hazard lights, got out to look at my car and what did I see? A ginormous nail over a ginormous washer stuck deep into my tire, and a black cord trailing out the back of my car. Seriously, it almost seemed like a joke. There were plenty of cars ahead of me on the road, why couldn't this happen to them? Or why couldn't the cord have just snapped and left the nail plunged deep into the road? And when it comes to anything going wrong with a car and me being stranded on the road alone, I become a big fountain of tears and there's no holding it back. Trust me, I wish I could, but I think the embarrassment of being stranded on the road brings my emotions to the surface. Thankfully, I didn't cry hard this time, I just got teary eyed.

Luckily for me, the lady right behind me offered to pull over and put my kids in her car so that they wouldn't have to stay in my hot car while it was on the side of the road. It had just started to rain so it was really nice of her to offer. Then not too far behind her was a guy who had just gotten off of work from a tire store and he got down under my car and checked to make sure my axle wasn't ruined (the cord was wrapped around it) and he changed my tire for me. (I had called my husband and he was on his way). While all this was going on, a lady walked up to me and told me that she had been parked on the side of the road talking on her cell phone and she had seen what happened, and the tire guy told her to wait until a cop showed up to make a report and then she could give her witness in case the city didn't believe my story. Well, right when the officer showed up it started pounding rain all over the place. My poor husband was soaked to the bone while I sat in his car. Thankfully, the hard rain only lasted about a minute and the rain completely stopped when we got out of the car to talk to the officer. To keep a long story short, he basically said that it wasn't a crime and we didn't need witnesses, so he wrote up a small report and gave us the phone number to the city office that we would need to contact in order to get our tire fixed. He said it was just one of those freak accidents (obviously!). He was very nice to us. So the next day, I got ahold of the department I needed to, they said they would pay for the damages, we took the tire to Les Schwab and they fixed it for free (that nail was over 6 inches long!. So, all in all, it was a win-win for everybody.

This weird story has a happy ending, but it's definitely one that is very rare and probably won't be heard again for a long time. I don't know if this was supposed to teach me a lesson or not, but it will certainly be something I won't forget.

Land of the Free

This last weekend was Jared's family reunion. We went camping at a place called Oakley Stake Ranch. It was a crazy, bumpy road up to a very nice and secluded campground in the mountains. We scraped the bottom of our car a few times, but thankfully nothing was ruined. We did get our car pretty dusty though. We even got our poor little hybrid stuck in some very soft dirt and we had to back up down the road and get a better running start at it.

This is the beautiful view of the Oakley valley from our camping spot. I loved being able to see all the circles and squares and shapes of the farm fields far below us. It is only a small piece of our country, but it reminded me that I am free to enjoy time in the mountains and to take pictures whenever I want to.

Grandma McCurdy set up a kiddy pool for the little ones to play in. Uriah had a good time playing in the water with his cousins.

The water was straight out of the hose and very cold, but Uriah didn't seem to mind. As long as he didn't have to sit down in it he was good!

These are some of Jared's family members up at the campground. We were all sitting around the fire singing and telling stories. Jordyn went from one lap...

...to another lap...

...to another. She got passed around more than any peace pipe I've ever heard of!

I was very thankful to Jared's family and for how much time they were willing to spend with Uriah and Jordyn. Everyone loved Jordyn so much, and I didn't mind when someone else wanted to carry her around. It definitely gave me some free time. I really enjoyed my long weekend. On Sunday night we watched the big fireworks from behind my sister's apartment and Uriah thought it was cool. He just kept saying" Wow, oh!, ah!Whoa!" over and over again, and he danced to the music that they had playing over the radio. It was so much fun.

Thankfully, we had Monday off to wind down and get caught up on some sleep. I love long weekends!