It's Official!!

I guess it is about time to announce to the bloggy universe that my friend Molly and I are opening our own business. It has been in the works for about a month and we are super excited to get going. The name of our business is...

We are going to jump into the world of vinyl lettering. We got our cutter a couple of weeks back and this past Monday, Molly's sister-in-law Brittany (who I knew about 15 years ago - small world) came to train us on the software. It was an awesome day and so far we have designed a couple of ideas. It is seriously the greatest job I have ever had. It is so much fun to design things for people.

We are also going to have an Open House on July 17th at my home to celebrate Christmas in July. We are hoping to be able to offer neighbor gifts, teacher gifts, gifts for anyone for Christmas. We will hopefully also have Halloween and Thanksgiving thrown in there as well.

It is going to be a roller coaster ride, but I am so excited. I seriously think about it all day and sometimes can't sleep at night because my brain won't shut off.

The first thing I made was a treat bucket for Dillon's preschool teacher. It was so much fun to design it and see it cut out and then put on a plastic container. I was so excited to give it to her last night at their graduation.

So, we are just getting started and getting our ducks in a row. But, if you need anything or have any ideas, please let us know. We would be happy to help!

May the Force be with you....

Yesterday as Dillon and I were walking into church, I went to grab the door and Dillon yelled "MOM STOP!" I turned around expecting to see that he had fallen or something and instead saw this:

I said "What are you doing?" With this huge grin and determined look on his face he simply said "I will use THE FORCE to open the door." He put his hand up to the door, squinted his eyes and stood there. I couldn't believe that he really expected the door to open. I let him sit there for about 30 seconds (I was afraid people were going to drive by and wonder what on earth these Mormons were teaching their children now!) So, I grabbed the door and opened it and he joyfully said "See Mom, it worked! I AM a real Jedi."

So let this be a warning to all of you that take your children to Disneyland - if you let them do the Jedi training, some of them might think they are a real Jedi! Now I just need to get him to figure out how to use The Force to do all the housework and clean up the toys! What a funny kid.

The Cookie Monster

I didn't realize until today that we have the Cookie Monster living right under our roof. Whenever there are cookies around, his best manners come out and he begs for one right out of the oven. He even says please and cookie in sign language to make sure that you understand what he wants. I am trying to get him to talk more so I am a mean mom and make him say the word before he can have one. This is complete torture for the Cookie Monster when he can see them and smell them! I made some pumpkin chocolate chip cookies for Brandon to take to work tomorrow and wouldn't you know it, the Cookie Monster was underneath my feet during the entire process and waited at the oven until they came out!
Take a look.... (p.s. you have to pause the music at the bottom of my blog).



As you can see, he finally said Cookie and please (he rubbed his chest which is sign language for please). What a cute Cookie Monster we have at our house!

Parade of Homes

This is definitely one of our favorite things to do every year. There is a Parade of Homes in St. George, Utah every February (right around President's Day). We have been going for the past 8 years and it is seriously something we look forward to like Christmas morning! My Mom started coming with us last year and now she schedules her trips up here around the Parade of Homes. This year, we even got my brother and his wife to fly up from Phoenix for 2 days to go with us. Here are a few pictures of some of our favorites in the past. We get so many ideas from going and we also get to take a peak into a life we will never know. This year they even had a house that was 20,000 square feet! (No, that is not a typo!)

This house was from 2005. It is gorgeous on the outside and the inside.
It also has amazing views. It sits on top of a huge hill.

This tree was in one of the kids' room in this house. It was such a cute idea.

This is one of our all-time favorite houses. It is from 2006. It has everything you would ever want in a house and the decorating was gorgeous. It is our dream home!

Check out the view from the family room! The entire back wall opens up to the back yard and view of the red rocks.

This is the backyard of our dream home. It also has a covered patio over by the family room that opens up. It has a sitting are with a TV and a bathroom for changing and showering after swimming. It has a fire pit with benches. It was the best backyard I have ever seen!

And last, but not least, it had an outdoor shower in the master bathroom. You could go outside and take a shower right from the shower in the bathroom. My husband has wanted one of these for a long time, so when he saw this, he spent about 40 minutes in the shower alone. We seriously have about 20 pictures of this one shower. I had to beg him to come and see the rest of the house!

This is from 2008. I thought this was such a cute room in the 20,000 sf house. I would love to have a theater where you could put on plays and have a talent show!

This is also from the 20,000 sf house. Inside this room is a bowling alley with 2 lanes and about 100 pinball machines with disco lights and a stereo system. It was so fun.

I thought this was so cute on the top of a little boys' room. I would love to do this in a toy room some day. My kids would love it.

You also get really cute ideas for craft rooms. I thought this was such a great idea and it wouldn't be a hard thing to do! The ribbon sat in a little basket attached to the door of the cabinet.

This was one of the most interesting ideas I have seen at the Parade of Homes. It was a grotto that you could enter from a secret passage way through the master bedroom. A bookcase opened up and had a little sitting room in a cave and then you walked through a tunnel to get to the hot tub inside this grotto. It was crazy. The guy that built it told us that part alone cost $100,000!!!

I love this chandelier. It flickered and looked like real candles.

This was a children's playroom. It was 2 stories and looked like a little village that they could go play in. I loved it.

This might look like a nice house right? Well, it was the POOL HOUSE! It had a bar, kitchen, couches, work out area and also beds for guests. Wouldn't that be great to have this?

We love the rock on this wall. We want to do something similar in our house, so we took a picture for future reference.

Well, as you can see, it is so much fun. So, if you ever need something to do right around President's Day, go check out these houses. It will take you an entire day and even then you won't be able to see all of them. If you have time, stay the night and spend 2 days looking. Gotta love it!

Where, O where did the blankie go?

If any of you know my son Daniel, he is attached to the blankie in the picture above! This kid goes everywhere with it. He sleeps with it, eats with it and even has to have it in the room when he is taking a bath! Needless to say, he loves this piece of material.

Well, the last time that Daniel had the flu, I had to wash his blankie every time he threw up on it so that he would go back to sleep. In the middle of the night one time, he had an accident and we sat up until the blankie was washed for him to get back to bed. I put him back in his bed and he threw up on half of it before I could even leave the room. I had had it! So, I grabbed the scissors and through my tears, cut the thing in half. So, now we had 2 blankies and one is always clean and ready to go.

Well, this last Wednesday, I was doing Laundry and Daniel saw the "other" blankie on my bed and went crazy. Can you imagine his excitement when he thought he had 2 of them? He walked around all morning with both of them. I didn't have the guts to take one away so I thought that I would just take one when he went down for his nap. Well, by the time we got home from taking Dillon to Preschool - we couldn't find either of them! I even called Dillon at Preschool to see if he had hid them from his brother. Nope, nothing. I looked everywhere. I seriously looked for a good 2 hours that day.

When Brandon got home from work that night, he looked for another hour. We just couldn't find them anywhere. So, Daniel was forced to go to bed with a different blankie. I was devastated. I even had dreams about where it might be. I would wake up in the morning stressing about the location of this blankie!

Friday was our "date" day. (Yes, I have the best mother-in-law in the world! She watches our kids every Friday so we can have some alone time). Brandon and I had a great lunch and a new restaurant on Lake Mead called Create. It was actually really good. Brandon had to turn his motorcycle boots into the boot shop for fixing and then we proceeded to spend 3 HOURS looking for a new blankie that was the same material as the old one. We went to 5 (yes I said FIVE) fabric stores and 3 baby stores trying to find a replacement. We were on a mission! This material just does not exist in fleece. We found it in cotton. But that would just not do!

Friday night I was in my closet getting changed for bed and decided to look under Brandon's shorts that were hung up on the bottom rack. Both Brandon and I had looked in our closet many times because Daniel likes to hide in the clothes when we are getting ready. Well, I pulled back the clothes and there were the blankies stuffed in a basket underneath Brandon's shorts. HOLY COW! I was so excited it was like I had just won the lottery! I ran out to the hall and showed Brandon (who was going through the towel closet seeing if I accidentally folded them inside a towel - told you, we were obsessed with it). We anxiously called Daniel to come and look. He rounded the corner and dove for the blankie. His face was priceless. I wish I would have had a camera.

So, now we have a kid who has his blankie back, 2 parents that are finally relieved that he won't be scarred for life and a brother who is glad his parents don't ask him every 20 minutes if he hid them from his brother! I can't believe how much it bothered us that he didn't have his blankie anymore. I love seeing him walk down the hall with it dragging behind him like Linus from the Peanuts. He is so dang cute with this thing. We play peek-a-boo about 20 times a day with it and we are all so happy that it is back in our lives!

(Whoa - that was a long story!)

It has been a while!

Well, I started this blog and haven't done anything. I still read a lot of blogs and decided it is only fair that I post something every once in a while. I will try to keep this going.

We have had a great month. We spent the first part of the month in California with Brandon's family. We went to Disneyland for 2 days and then stayed in Newport Beach and went to San Diego and Sea World. We also spent a little time at the beach. The water was still really cold. I will try to post some pictures.


Daddy and Dillon on the rockets. I get so sick on this ride. So...Daddy gets to take him.












This is one of Brandon's favorite rides. I don' t know why. They all came off the ride looking like they just got out of the shower. But, it must have been a fun shower because they were all laughing.


We were standing in front of Disneyland waiting to take a family picture and Daniel saw Chip and Dale and walked right over and started waving and say "hi." Well, Chip (or Dale - can you tell the difference?) got down and Daniel ran up and gave him a huge hug and wouldn't let go. I finally had to go and get him. It was precious!





This should be a post all by itself. Dillon got picked to do Jedi Training. (I was yelling and pointing to his birthday button and he finally got picked). Now, to his defense, he had never seen this before and didn't know what to expect. It was hillarious. He couldn't get his sword out and we were laughing so hard I almost had to excuse myself to the restroom. The Jedi doing the training was also trying to talk to him and he was just so fascinated with his sword that he didn't hear him. But, he got to fight Darth Vader and that is all that matters, right? Here he is trying to get his sword open.


Daddy and Daniel at the beach. This was the first time that Daniel had seen the beach and he was so excited about it, but he didn't like getting his feet wet. The water was really cold. Dillon didn't care that much - he went right in and went body surfing.








This is Brandon and Dillon at Sea World. No, they didn't turn into penguins - this is just a poster that they were standing behind.


Looking at the sting rays. Daniel was so excited.






Daddy and Dillon watching the pet show.





Dillon also turned 5 years old. He now loves Star Wars and HAD to have a Star Wars birthday party. We had 11 boys running around the back yard with light sabers (pool noodles) and jedi robes. We did some Jedi training and even had an awards ceremony. Then we ate hotdogs and opened presents. It was a great day and we had so much fun.


All the boys would put their lightsabers on the table and than yell "Go Jedis!" and raise them into the sky. They came up with it all on their own. It was so cute.

Here is Daniel hitting the Darth Vader pinata. It was pretty sweet!

Well, that is enough for now. Thank you for your time.

And we are off!

Well, after reading blogs from all around the world, I have decided to become a blogger. I am not sure why and I am not sure what will come of it. But, I hope to be able to meet new people and keep track of what is going on in my life. I think it will be fun and hope to learn how to do all of this stuff. So, if you are interested, stay tuned, we are just getting started.