summer lovin’

 

Summer.  Where did you go?  But seriously … 

We spent Mitchell’s birthday doing something we all love … eating ice cream.

We went to the Fillmore family reunion in Provo

I have been busy buying little boy stuff and contrary to popular belief …

little boys are just as fun to shop for.

We attended the wedding receptions for Kevin Vaughn and Michelle Lowe.

 

Started to embark on this adventure … heaven help us.

 

Attended the Ogden Temple open house

  

Pregnancy update:  7 weeks to go before our world will be officially rocked.  

I’m feeling great … just big.  And I feel like I spend 75% of my days adjusting clothing … pulling shirts down and pants up.   So to solve that problem … I just don’t wear pants anymore.

 

 

 

Oh and a bunch of photos of Winter … because I said so.

terrific twos

 

I feel like this age gets a bad rap … and personally Mitchell and I think they should be called the “terrific twos.”

Yes, she has meltdowns.
Yes, she can be incredibly stubborn.

But holy hannah, she is so much fun.

  To be honest, we didn’t really get anything for her birthday – unless you count a cheap thrift store puzzle. 

So we thought we would fill her day with fun, beginning with a trip to a German bakery for some donuts.

We then headed over to the Discovery Children’s Museum.

And then finished off the night at a fair with some friends.  This fair was Winter’s heaven … a noisy heaven filled with greasy fair food, sweaty teenagers and rides aplenty.

 

She was not okay with the length of the rides.

 

I showed Winter a blog post a while ago and she became obsessed with the animal masks

http://nieniedialogues.blogspot.com/2014/04/party-animal.html

She would ask to see the “kitty mask” daily.  I wanted to get everyone animal masks to wear for her birthday but just couldn’t justify the cost.  So we settled on some party animals on her cake instead.

I really think her favorite part of the day was everyone singing Happy Birthday to her.  In fact, she made everyone sing it a second time.

deja vu

 

We started our house hunting many moons ago.  We have been at it off and on for three years.   Those three years have been filled with numerous bids, inspections, emotional highs and lows …

Well, about a month ago, we thought we had found the one.  It had all of our criteria: big open floor plan, three bedrooms upstairs, a master bathroom, a huge unfinished basement, and it was in a really nice area (literally one mile away from the Oquirrh Mountain temple and Daybreak).  We felt good about it and they accepted our asking price.  We had an inspection done and began making remodeling plans right away.   Mitchell was buying cool tools and I was busy finding sweet deals on the fun stuff - area rugs, curtains, etc and pinning away on pinterest.

Last night we had a fight with our house and broke it off.   Long story short:  there was an architectural issue we thought we could fix.  Turns out we can’t.  We stayed up till midnight last night going over measurements and researching numerous possible solutions.  I cried … and then ate a bowl of cereal.   We even had my uncle who has been in construction/remodeling since the beginning of time come and take a looksie today.  His words, “You better run.”  So we are lacing up our running shoes, doing some stretches and making a break for it.

Heartbroken?  Yep.  Frustrated and disappointed?  You betcha.

Sound familiar?

http://fillmorespace.blogspot.com/2012/11/homeless.html

Are we cursed or something?  Did we unknowingly step on one too many cracks?  I steer clear of black cats and try to stay on the good side of all the voodoo witches I meet.  What gives? 

I spent today kind of moping around and trying to come to grips with reality – I may or may not have shed a couple more tears.

And I felt an awful lot like this:

 

  After an afternoon nap I felt much better and am able to see the positives that can come from this:

1)  We will be saving mucho $ 

2)  I will still be super close to my beloved thrift stores

3) There will only be one bathroom to clean instead of three

4) We will be 5 minutes away from our birthing center instead of 30 mins, had we moved.

5)  Winter and her new little brother will hopefully form an awesome bond, because now, they will be sharing a room. 

6)  We are happy, healthy and have WAY too much to be grateful for to be sad and grumpy about this situation.

 

So, for now – we will be giving the whole house hunting thing a break.  I think any house we would look at in the near future would be like a rebound boyfriend … and we all know those are trouble and a waste of time.  I think Mitchell and I will celebrate not spending crazy amounts of money with some ice cream tonight.

two for one.

'

Mother's day.  Dad's birthday. 

This party was a twofer.

Oh and that massive plate o' sugar?  That is just one of the many ice cream cakes Mitchell has constructed.  I think this may have been the best one thus far in his cake making career.   Layers of oreo, brownies, homemade fudge, butterfingers and ice cream .... that, my friends, is the recipe for success.

Why the heck do people need to age.  Sometimes I just want to put my parents in bubbles and feed them crazy amounts of fruits and veggies in order to make sure they live to 150 years old.  These years are going too fast people, make them count.

When you have your brothers and husband cut the cake and serve it .... it ends up looking something like this ....

My mom.  What can I say?  She really is one of the best people I know. 

I love her more and more as I discover and experience more phases of motherhood.  It really is a thankless job and the depth of love a parent has for their child is crrrrrrazy.  Love you mom.

Winter and I's attempt at capturing a special day ....

19 weeks.                            

Mr. Magoo

 

I don’t think Easter will ever be a big holiday in terms of gifts for our family.  Do people still even try to sell the weird story of a giant bunny hiding baskets to their kids? 

Winter enjoyed her Easter despite the absence of any kind of Easter basket or toys.   I have to admit I was a wee bit scared for the Easter egg hunt portion of her day.  Winter is horrible at finding things – just call her Mr. Magoo.  She will run franticly around a room looking for her blanket and it will literally be right in front of her nose.   She found them … with a little handholding.

Winter and I took a little field trip to Temple Square recently and I was hoping to get beautiful pictures of our cute little curly sue with the incredibly awesome flowers.  Nope.  I don’t know why I keep tricking myself into thinking “oh this time will be different and she will sit in one spot” or “this time she will actually look at the camera.”  WRONGO.

 

About once a year I get an “expensive” haircut.  Expensive to me is $35-40 … I know some of you are laughing at that amount but you must remember this is coming from the girl who uses Suave products because I’m cheap.  My time had come and so I scheduled an appointment.  My regular girl just had her baby so I decided to take a risk and go with someone else at the same salon.  Don’t take risks people.   Gambling.  Russian Roulette.  It’s not smart.   I walked out and wanted to cry.  It was a hack job.  Weird long wispy pieces of hair here and there.  And I even tipped her!  I don’t know what my problem is.  So I ran to Great Clips (yes I said Great Clips people) and they charged me $5 to play clean up.  Moral of the story – listen to the prophet and don’t gamble or you will end up with a horrendous haircut.

Hair post clean up

Oh and our family is expanding along with my waistline. 

In October we will be adding more testosterone to the mix and boy are we excited about it. 

Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing

Picture this.  Gorgeous trees with light pink flowers.  Beautiful tulips and daffodils in bloom.   Amazing weather.

Of course I’m going to want to make Winter wear her sheep coat and take some pictures.

Winter, however knows when I want cute pictures and she plots and plans on how to make our photo shoots as painful as possible.  Weird faces, crying, running away, being stubborn …. oh dear.

 

Our little wolf in sheep’s clothing … but seriously.

 

Mitchell and I took our first “hike” of the season.  And when I say hike, I really mean a short trail with absolutely no kind of elevation change whatsoever.  

 

Mitchell and I both agreed that we feel kind of weird without Winter. 

It just doesn’t feel right when our little monster isn’t at our side.

Winter updates:

She loves when we sing primary songs to her

She loves pointing out letters of the alphabet in stores, on license plates, on t-shirts etc.

Petting horses is on her list of favorite things to do

She loves Elmo, Arthur and Curious George.

Shopping used to be fun until she decided that riding in the shopping cart was for babies. 

She has developed a very fake and high pitched laugh

She says “sorry” about 3 bajillion times a day

favorite phrases:

“do ya hear dat?”

“what happened?” – she will throw her food on the floor and then innocently throw that question in my direction

“dood job”

“don’t like it”

 

And here is another fine example of how much Winter hates it when I break out my camera. 

What a sass-a-frass.