Sunday, March 30, 2008

Little Miss Hannah!!

In my Easter post I promised to post some pictures of Hannah this Sunday in her Easter dress. Unfortunately, it snowed almost ALL day today, so I did not take any pictures of Hannah. I was hoping to do it on BYU campus after church because they often have pretty flowers, but everything is still dead here and like I said, it snowed today...GRRRRRR. So, it may be a few weeks because I would like to take some nice pictures of her....hopefully the sun and flowers will come out soon. I thought instead I would post some funny things that Hannah does.

1. She yells my name, "MAMA!!" Then I say, "What?" She says, "BOO!" She does this over and over, especially when we're in the car.
2. Whenever I go outside to throw something away or get the mail, she hides behind the opened door and watches me through the crack. Then, she tries to scare me when I come back inside. It's really funny.
3. She loves to close her eyes really tight and show her teeth.
4. She loves any kind of Chapstick or lubricant that she can put on her face. I think she got used to these after she had the rash around her mouth (which has been completely gone ever since we went to the Derm....thanks Doc!). She loves to spread them on her or my face.
5. Every time her nose starts to run she says, "Boogies" and makes me wipe them.
6. She is always so concerned with her finger nails. Anytime she has the tiniest hang nail, she tries to pull it off herself. When that doesn't work, she makes me clip them (or bite them.....bad habit that she is picking up from me).

There are more silly things that I can't think of at the moment, but maybe I will add them to the list when I do.
Scroll down for another post!
P.S. I feel bad for saying that I hope no one else tags me, so if you have a good tag, bring it on, because I really do enjoy doing them.

A New Look For the Kitchen

These past two weeks have been a bit challenging for me. Now that I don't have any homework to do at night (and I often find myself sitting in front of the television), I decided to take on a project. I have had some French style decorations for my kitchen for a few years but didn't put them up because they didn't match at all. The kitchen was yellow and green and had a fruit border.....my decorations are mostly black, tan, and red. So, I decided to paint the kitchen red and tan. Unfortunately, there was nothing I could do about the tile and counter tops, which are still yellow and green, but at least the walls match a little bit better. Here are a few "after" pictures.





Here are a few "before" pictures. Please excuse the messy kitchen...we had just finished eating dinner and I was about to take off the wall paper so I wasn't really focused on cleaning.




This project actually ended up being a bit of a bear, as I found that our ceiling and our windows are crooked. The tile on the right wall is a quarter of an inch taller than the tile on the left wall. This made is difficult for the line between the red and tan, as they are different heights on the walls. Hopefully no one will look too closely when they come to visit, though. The walls in this apartment feel like complete concrete, which makes it almost impossible for the paint to stay on them. It often rips off like a big Bandaid. So, because I used paint tape to make that line in the middle of the wall, when I ripped it off, some of the paint ripped off with it. That was definitely not fun. This apartment is all jacked up, but at least I feel like the kitchen is more my style. I still need to paint white over the parts that I got red on the ceiling and cabinets, so I'm not completely finished, but it's almost there. This was my first time ever painting, and at least for now I know what to expect when we live in a real house, and I will probably end up hiring someone.

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

One more tag....

Ok, one more tag. Frankly, I hope that this is the last one. I like getting tagged, so thank you Amber, but I'm sure it's annoying to all of you reading it and I feel like I keep writing some of the same things over. This one's good, though, so you have to read! If anyone wants to do it, you are more than welcome.

10 Years Ago

I was finishing up my Freshman year of high school (I had just gotten my braces off so I felt good), crushing on a lot of boys, needing a hair straightener, and in a lot better shape than I am now.

5 Things on my list to do Today

1. Play with Hannah
2. Paint the Kitchen
3. Make dinner
4. Watch The Biggest Loser
5. Write blog

What would I do if I were suddenly a Millionaire?

We would DEFINITELY move out of this spider infested, flooded kitchen, dark and smelly apartment. We would pay off the car we just bought and all of our school loans and then save most of it. I would also give every member of my family some of it. Scott would continue to go to school but would not have to work while doing so and I would continue to stay at home with Hannah. We would go on MANY vacations and donate a lot to the church and other charities.

3 Bad Habits
1. Biting my nails (toe nails, that is....ok totally kidding, but I used to joke around when I was little and stick my toes in my mouth).
2. Saying "um" when I'm speaking in public
3. nagging Scott

5 Places I've lived

1. Torrance, CA
2. Elk Grove, CA
3. Rexburg, ID
4. Orem, UT
5. Provo, UT

5 jobs I've had

1. Zehnder's Yogurt (Is that how you spell Zehnder? Or is it Zhender? I can't remember).
2. Western Watts (YUCK!!!)
3. Mimi's Cafe
4. Staples
5. House Wife

5 things people don't know about me- since I've already done a few blogs with this, I thought I would change this to 5 of my Pet Peeves.


1. Since Jennifer blogged about people calling Sherbet, SherBERT, I'd also like to say that when people say words wrong it drives me nuts. A few other examples of this is the word "Nuclear." The word is NU-CLE-AR, not NUCULAR (President Bush says this all the time). The dictionary says you can say it either way but that's not how the word is spelled. Another word that's not as annoying to me as nucular is Mayonnaise. Scott calls is MANNAISE, as I know a lot of you do too. Again, that's not how it's spelled. I started to call Hannah Hannaise, though, so it's kind of grown on me. There are other words like this, but I can't think of any at the time.

2. My second pet peeve is kind of silly, but I am a big fan of biology so bare with me. It drives me nuts when I am watching a TV show or movie and the parents both have blue eyes while their children have brown eyes. Anyone who remembers biology knows that this is not possible (well, nothing is impossible, but according to biology it's VERY rare). An example of this would be 7th Heaven, if any of you have seen this show before. The parents both have blue eyes but a few of their children have brown....IMPOSSIBLE. If any of you can name me a family whose parents both have real blue eyes (not hazel), and has a child with pure brown eyes, please let me know about it.

3. The third pet peeve is when I am driving and people pull out in front of me so that I have to hit my brakes, and what's even more annoying about this is when there is no one behind me. If that person who pulled out in front of me could have waited 5 seconds for me to pass, they could have pulled out in front of no one and I wouldn't have had to hit my brakes.

4. This one is short- when the house is a mess and I've cleaned it SEVERAL times already that day.

5. This last one is kind of silly and I hope it doesn't offend anyone. You won't understand this one unless you are LDS. It annoys me when people use quotes or stories in church that they don't have references to. For example, I am sure many of you have used this as I have before, but the quote, "I never said it would be easy. I only said it would be worth it." We all quote this as if Jesus Christ said it and nowhere in the scriptures does Christ say this (or in talks, Ensigns, etc). Can you find it anywhere? I even saw a picture of Jesus in Gethsemane in the Deseret Book Store with this in quotes on it. It's a wonderful quote, but Jesus never said those exact words and yet we all quote it. Here is a video from The Singles Ward 2 that is hilarious to me, and sums it up quite nicely.



For the sake of you all reading, I will not write any more quotes or stories in church that annoy me, but there are more (just the fact that the first presidency had to come out and tell everyone to stop saying that we who are living in President Hinckley's time would be bowed down to after this life shows that we sometimes have problems with misquoting people because that is not true either). Please, just give me a reference!!!!!


Where will I be in 10 years?

We will probably have 2 or 3 more children and will hopefully be well off:) We will live in a house, hopefully out of Utah, and we will be happy.

Sunday, March 23, 2008

Happy Easter!!!

Happy Easter!!! Yesterday we went over to Hollie's in-law's house for an Easter egg hunt and a BBQ. It was really fun to watch Hannah go after the eggs. Here's a short video of her picking up a few eggs:






Here are some pictures of the event:


Kamrie, Sienna, and Hannah

Shhhh....don't tell Si Si that Hannah stole some of her candy...hee hee

I think Hannah had candy in her mouth for about an hour straight. She ate all of her candy plus stole some other kids'.

This morning Hannah and I didn't go to church because she had a terrible night's sleep last night. She is sick again and slept in until 10:30am, which was incredibly nice for me because I was knocked out from the Nyquil that I took the night before (and thank you to my incredible husband for getting up with her in the middle of the night). Easter is definitely not a day that one should miss church. I was sad that I missed all of the great talks about the Resurrection and that I didn't get to show off Hannah's cute Easter dress. She'll get to wear it next week, though, and I plan on taking some pictures of her in it, so stay tuned for those. Even though Hannah was sick, the Easter bunny still left her some treats. The right basket in this picture was her basket. She got a baby doll that she picked out at the toy store, some finger paints, and an alphabet puzzle (and some more candy). Scott and I got 101 Dalmatians and Enchanted (these are actually probably more for Hannah) and a lot of candy! I've eaten so much candy these last few days......I feel sick! Finally, the Easter bunny left us one more present:


We bought ourselves a 2005 Hyundai Sonata yesterday. I know what you're thinking.....'WHAT!! A Hyundai....why in the world would you buy that?' Those of you who have had a Hyundai before know that they used to have problems but are now actually one of the best cars out there. Our bishop works for them and says that they are the cars that he has to order parts for the least because they rarely break down. Our bishop also gave us his employee discount on the car, and we were able to trade it in for our Durango. I really liked the Durango but we were almost paying a full car payment every month in gas for that thing. The "Check Engine" light was always on and more and more problems seemed to be occurring over time. We are SO SO grateful that we had that car, thanks to my wonderful mother-in-law and father-in law. We will still be making payments on this new car, but in the long run we will save money on it because hopefully, it won't break down and it uses A LOT less gas.

Tonight we were able to go to Hollie and Jarin's for dinner and an Easter lesson. The dinner was delicious and the lesson was wonderful! Hannah loves her cousins and had a ton of fun over there!! It's been a wonderful Easter for us.....hopefully yours was just as great!

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Scott

Look at my stud muffin strutting his stuff at the bowling alley. This picture is actually quite funny.....it looks like he's walking down a runway. Anyway, that's not the reason that I am writing this blog. Cori Robinson wrote an awesome blog about how wonderful her husband is, and I pretended like I was tagged in doing this (even though it wasn't a tag blog) because I would also like to write about how wonderful my husband is. Scott has been working so hard this semester. He goes to school full time, works about 30 hours a week, and does a great job at his calling. In the midst of all of this, he tries his hardest to spend as much time with Hannah and me as he can. I know he has a lot of pressure on him, mostly from me to do well in school, and I know it has been stressful for him. He is doing very well for his first semester at BYU in incredibly hard classes and I am proud of him. The minute he gets home from work, he usually goes off to our bedroom to study. Poor thing is so tired by the end of the day that he usually starts to fall asleep while he's reading. I know that he is doing all of this for our family. He wants to do well in college so that he can provide for us in the future and I am so grateful for that (even if I complain often that I don't get to spend enough time with him). He has also been incredibly great about working while going to school so that I can stay home with Hannah, even though I know it would be a lot easier for him if I were to work.

Scott and I also love a lot of the same things. I used to think that I always had to be out doing things to have fun, but now I know that we can have a great time together watching The Office or any other mindless TV show, or reading Harry Potter together.

Scott's also a wonderful father. He loves to play with Hannah. He reads to her, sings to her, and always has to get her after she's woken up from a nap because he's excited to see her. I am so glad that I married him; I couldn't have asked for a better man!

Now I tag you all to write something nice about your spouse. Scroll down for another post!

Homemade Dresses!


I had to post these pictures because my mom made this adorable dress and jacket for Hannah. There is a reason why this is so important to me. I hope this doesn't embarrass you mom, but I'm going to talk a little bit about you. In 2005, my mom started having health problems, which she later found out to be related with her thyroid. She struggled with anxiety attacks, infections, back and knee problems and more. I know that those years were very hard for her, and I wish that I could have been there for her. After more than two years of these health problems and many prayers and blessings, she is finally back to her normal spunky, adorable self, and I am so grateful for that. Thank you for the adorable outfits that you have made for Hannah.....I'm so glad that Heavenly Father answered our prayers and healed you.

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Potty Talk

Hannah has been so interested in going potty lately. She usually tells me when she has gone "poo poos" and she always wants to come into the bathroom when either one of us (Scott or I) is going (and she usually says, "pee pees" when she wants to come in). Last week I met a mother at the park whose daughter is already potty trained and isn't even two yet. I asked her how she did it and she told me that they bought their daughter a little potty and kept it in the bathroom. They didn't push their daughter into using it, but she quickly became interested on her own and was potty trained two months later. I decided that I wanted to try this tactic as well. Yesterday I bought Hannah a potty and put it in the bathroom. She played with it like a toy for awhile. Today I told her that that was where she could go "pee pee" or "poo poos" if she wanted to. This afternoon she kept saying "pee pee," so I put her on her toilet to see if she would go. She sat there for a few minutes and then......she went!!! I was really surprised and happy!! I kept telling her "Good Job...You went pee pee!" My happiness ended quickly when I realized that I am the one who will be cleaning out her potty after she goes....yuck! Anyway, I'm sure it was just a fluke for now, but it was still fun. I'm not going to push it on her because I know that she is young, but I would love it if she was potty trained by two. I know the average age is around 3 years, and I will be okay with that too, but to be able to save money on diapers and stop changing stinky poop would be a delight!!

Saturday, March 08, 2008

Reading

I have never really been into reading for pleasure. I never really loved English when I was young, although I did love to write (Remember, Stacy, in "Writer's Workshop" when we would compete in writing the most pages?). When I was in high school, I felt like I was too busy to read for pleasure and when I had time, I would have to read the scriptures (Ok, I did read an occasional book here or there). Then college came and reading for pleasure did not sound like fun to me, because I had to read thousands of text book pages or journal articles for my classes as well as the scriptures. Laying on the couch always sounded much more enticing to me than popping open another book (reading took too much effort because you actually had to think). However, I told myself that I would start reading for pleasure as soon as I was done with college. In January, I finally started reading the Harry Potter series (even though we have all of the movies) and just finished the 7th book last night. They were awesome!! The books are so much more detailed than the movies and I found myself craving to read more, rather than to watch TV, to relax. I am depressed that I am done reading the books, but I am excited for the sixth movie to come out at the end of this year. The next series that I plan to read will be Twilight (although I need to get my hands on a copy of them; they are always out at the library). After I read that series, I really don't know what to read. Does anyone have any suggestions for good books??? Reading has become a necessity at night now, but I feel like I don't even know what books are good out there because I have never really been into reading before (sad, I know).

ABC Tag

Well I was tagged again! Stacy, I kept some of your answers because they were worded nicely.


A-Attached or single: Very attached!
B- Best Friend: I would have to say that Scott is my best friend.
C-Cake or Pie: I guess this depends on the cake or pie. Sometimes the frosting on cake can be gross to me. However, certain kinds of pie are gross to me too. I like banana creme pie and most berry pies, but I also love certain kind of cakes, especially ones that come from Costco.
D-Day of Choice: Saturday...the whole day is at your dispense for whatever you want or need to do!!!
E- Essential Item: The diaper bag....it goes with me just about everywhere.
F- Favorite Color: dark red
G- Gummi Bears or Worms: Worms...especially the sour kind.
H: Hometown: Elk Grove, CA
I- Indulgence(s): ice cream, cheesecake, hot chocolate
J- January or July: JULY! Summer!
K-Kids: One so far! Our darling daughter.
L-Life is incomplete without: My family and friends
M- Marriage Date: April 30, 2004
N- Number of Siblings: 3 sisters and 1 brother
O- Oranges or Apples: This depends. At first I would say oranges but I have had some pretty nasty oranges in my life....ones that I couldn't even finish because they were so dry and chewy. If the orange is juicy and perfectly ripe, then definitely oranges; otherwise apples.
P- Phobias or Fears: failing, spiders
Q- Quote: I don't wanna work, I just wanna bang on this mug all day-- from The Office
R- Reason To Smile: Because someone told me a hilarious joke
S- Season: Summer for sure (although I like spring too)
T- Tag Six: Anyone who wants to do it.....I would love to see my sisters and mom do it!
U- Unknown Fact About Me: I am burned right now because I went tanning this week for the first time in years. If you notice me getting tanner in the next month, this is why (although I hope to refrain from getting too tan like I did my Senior year when people started calling me brownie).
V- Vegetarian or Oppressor of Animal: I am a meat eater.
W- Worst Habit: Biting my nails
X- X-Rays or Ultrasounds: Ultrasounds!!!
Y- Your Favorite Food: most types of pasta
Z- Zippers or Zebras: I could probably live without a Zebra...they aren't a huge part of my life, although they are beautiful wonderful creatures. Zippers, now that I think about it are a part of my daily life. I'd probably have a hard time without zippers!

Wednesday, March 05, 2008

Little Lioness


Before


After

Yikes!!!! Poor Hannah is going to be stuck with my lioness hair. This picture of her reminds me of my Freshman year cheerleader picture, where my hair was out of control because the wind was blowing. Sometimes I feel bad for the bad genes that Scott and I have passed on to Hannah. Poor thing is going to have thick, wavy, coarse hair and will be told this by every hair stylist. Good thing hair straighteners and silky serum were invented!!!!

Tuesday, March 04, 2008

What a Week!

Everyone I know has been sick these last few weeks with the flu or something else. It doesn't seem to matter what state you are in either, as I have heard of friends/family being sick in Arizona, North Carolina, California, and here. Last Saturday Hannah woke up really sweaty, so I took her temperature and saw that she had a fever. It quickly raised throughout the day and hit 104 degrees. I was worried that she was going to start seizing, as I know of babies who have done this before because of a high fever. So, I did everything I could, gave her Tylenol, a cool bath, and plenty to drink. She didn't seize, thank goodness, but had a terrible night's sleep. Sunday morning we all missed church. My husband was kind enough to stay home with me so that I could sleep while he watched Hannah. Around noon on Sunday, Hannah's fever suddenly went away. I was worried that she had the flu, so I was expecting other symptoms to come. She was really out of it that day, though, and even fell asleep in my arms, which she never does. Anyway, since Sunday Hannah has still not developed any other symptoms of the flu, so I believe she has Roseola (thanks to my mom who told me about it). It's just a virus that infants can get that causes a high fever and ends with a rash around the body. Tonight I noticed a rash forming around her chest and back which coincides with the symptoms of roseola. She has also been so much more fussy than usual. Yesterday I had to give myself a time out from her because I was losing my patience very quickly with her crying. Today was much better, though, and hopefully she will be completely better by tomorrow. It has been hard to watch her go through this.......poor baby. I just wanted to apologize to Cori, as this is a contagious virus, and I really hope that your kids don't get it.