Jane's boy toy

"Where's my boy toy?" she will ask or "Hey! That's MY boy toy!"
I think she's got a girl one too, hence the name. It just makes me laugh when she calls it that.

Used house for sale

Ready or not, here it comes... Even though we are still finishing up on the exterior painting and interior details, our house was listed today. I took some pictures of it until we get someone to do a better job for us, you can see them if you click on the link and follow to the 'property tour' tab. They aren't great, but at least it creates the illusion that I keep my house clean.

To see our listing, click here.

P.S. - That is not a recent photo of our house. We don't have one yet since the trim needs to be painted, so they took the photo from the listing when we bought the house. The snow makes it look kinda sad.

Happy Birthday Leslie

My older sister, Leslie, is turning a year older today. I'd tell you how old, but honestly, I don't know. I could also figure it out, but I'm not going to take the time. All we need to know is that it's Leslie's birthday... So hooray to you, Leslie! Happy Birthday!

(the only photos I've got of her are from her wedding. at least she looks particularly good.)

The awful state of the world

Yesterday, Jane was in the car with Brent and me as we drove by a Sonic that was being torn down. I mentioned to Brent that it was weird that they were tearing it down and Jane took immediate interest.
"I don't see it" she said.
"that's because there's not much left of it" I replied.
Then the questions really started coming...
"why would they tear down a Sonic?"
"Are they going to tear down the Sonic by our house?"
"I would be sad if they tore down our Sonic."
Her questions and comments became increasingly intense and concerning to her. We reassured her that no one was going to take our Sonic away, that it made plenty of money and we'd be able to go get Sonics whenever we wanted to. It seemed of little comfort. After a minute she started with...
"what will happen if they tear down the shoe and clothes stores and we can't buy shoes and clothes anymore? What will we wear?"
Have you ever met a 3 year old so concerned about these things? Again we told her that no one was going to tear down the stores and that even if they did, Mommy would learn how to sew better to make her some clothes. It was quite an interesting conversation with Jane that I didn't want to forget. More importantly, it goes to show that Jane and I may like our happy hour Sonic drinks a little too much.

Fun with Lizzy

If you know Jane, you know that she's a bit high maintenance. She's very demanding and can pretty much drain all of your time and energy if you don't watch yourself. Lizzy is pretty much the opposite. She'll just hang out by herself and she doesn't get upset when you don't pay attention to her. She just sucks it up when Jane takes all her toys and locks her in or out of rooms. This morning, Jane is at playgroup and Lizzy has free reign of the house for a short time. I was straightening up in Jane's room and took a couple pictures of Lizzy having a grand ol' time with all the pillows.




This kid loves pillows.



If you'll notice, she still doesn't have a single tooth.



Enjoy it while you can Lizzy. Jane's back home before you know it.

P.S. - Lizzy is so cute. She's started giving kisses to me. She doesn't really kiss me, but she'll come over really close and pull me towards her and make kissy noises. Then she'll just walk away until she needs her next fix. I LOVE this kid!

Stringhams vs. Disneyland

Finally I'm taking a few minutes to post about our visit to Disneyland. We had originally thought that we would go this fall, but decided to aim for April so as to avoid any potential pregnancies. Ha ha. When we found out that we were already pregnant, we thought we'd just go forward with the plans since it would be a good time of year and Leslie didn't have class that week (meaning that I wouldn't need to be here to watch Ben). Then we decided to move and Leslie ended up having obligations that she needed to be at and on and on, but we were determined. Brent got to take the whole week off of work and even though it seemed totally impractical to go, it turned out great. I loved getting away from the house and the stress and feel like I can handle things here now that I've had a breather. Anyway... here are some photos of our fun.




Jane's first ride... I thought she was going to be terrified, but I was wrong. She loved it!




Poor Lizzy spend the whole morning in the stroller. We finally let her out to come on the rides with us.



I don't know who loved the tea cups more, Jane or Brent.








Jane was SOOOO happy to meet Jasmine. These princesses they have there are amazing. They just sit and pose all day and this girl really had it down. She must have spent hours practicing exactly how to hold her arms and her chin and her smile. I hope she's well compensated.





I stood in line forever with Jane to meet Goofy and right when he was going to leave, some woman cut me off! Can you see how mad I was?




Our second day there was a bit of a bust. The girls were both so tired that they were completely unmanageable. Jane had what we believe was a cramp in her leg and screamed in supposed pain every time her feet touched the ground. Lizzy was just as bad. We were afraid we'd wreck ourselves carrying both of them around for long, so we left early.



Jane got to meet Minnie, which was the thing she wanted to do more than anything



We bought her huge lollipop and she got to pick out her special present from the stores. She picked these lovely Minnie Mouse ears and she's in love with them. She was so happy that she didn't even mind leaving.



And we headed back to Las Vegas that afternoon. All in all, I didn't mind leaving and it worked out well getting back home a day early. I'm very happy to have been able to get out of town at just the right time. Now it's back to real life.

Fun in the Sun

So, I'm going to use a couple posts to cover our California trip because I just feel like it. We got there on Monday and Brent was absolutely determined that we were going to go to the beach. Don't get me wrong, I wanted to go to the beach, but not like Brent did. Apparently he has deep seated issues about the beach from his childhood. He remembers going to visit his grandparents in California all the time, but never being allowed on the beach and it has scarred him so deeply that he has vowed never to go to California without taking his children to the beach, so there you have it. Our hotel was in Garden Grove (which made me sing that one Sublime song over and over all week) and apparently Garden Grove isn't all that close to the coast. We drove for what seemed like forever to get there and tried to follow the bad directions that the hotel gave us and when we finally arrived, the sun was starting to set and it was quite chilly, but what can you do? So we got out and played in the sand for a while...

Jane got caught in the tide and when she was trying to run away...

she fell down and got soaked. It was great.



Brent tried to get a photo of me and my girls, but, as usual, they weren't very cooperative so I just picked one for your viewing pleasure.



I love this photo of Jane. I kept taking pictures of her and telling her to look at me and smile. She was obviously getting annoyed since this is what she gave me. It's so Jane.

Thanks Daddy for dragging us to the beach! It was worth the trip.

Driving Heaven

We just got home from our trip to Disneyland and as anyone in Utah knows, it is a LONG drive there. We are lucky enough to have places to stop in Cedar City and Vegas, so that makes it a lot easier on the kids, but they still don't like it. There was a lot of fussing and crying and begging and bathroom stops, but there were a couple of times that we were in driving heaven.

I'd like to thank the manufacturers of Benadryl for making it all possible.

Happy Birthday Lizzy!

Every year seems to go faster than the year before, doesn't it? I know everyone always feels this way when their kids somehow turn a year older, but it seems to have gone by WAY too fast. We were remembering one year ago today that we were in the hospital with our new little baby girl. She has been a joy from the get go. When I was pregnant with her, I carried her in a way that should have been horribly uncomfortable, but I never really had any problems with it. I never got very big with her and I had (got) to go in every month for ultrasounds to make sure she was growing. When she was born and weighed a whopping 5 lbs. 8 oz., it all made sense.
(the date on our camera was wrong, she was really born on the 17th. this may get confusing in the future)

The delivery was very easy (as you can imagine with a baby that small). This is a photo of her after she was cleaned up. So quiet and calm, she didn't even cry.

This photo is kinda creepy, but look how small she was!

Sorry about the IV and gross photo of me, but I love it. I love that she's so comfy looking up at her mommy like she knows who I am and she's happy to be here.
Lizzy has been a joy ever since. I always found it relaxing and rewarding to take care of her. Even though she can cause a lot of trouble, you can't get upset at such a happy, good natured little girl.



This is her and her daddy a year later. I love you Lizzy! Happy Birthday!

Little Lizzy Loopy Loo

I often refer to Lizzy as 'Busy' partly because I always feel the need to have nicknames for my children (for some reason) and partly because she really is the busiest baby I've ever seen. Seriously, this kid never stops moving. Constant motion. When she's tired, it just gets worse. Instead of getting slow and lethargic, she moves more and faster and squeals and growls and pretty much does anything she can to prevent herself from falling asleep. I took this very low quality video last night of exhausted Lizzy in action. Sorry it's so long, I got distracted by my own amusement and forgot to turn off the camera.

She's crafty

I generally wouldn't dare refer to myself as a "crafty" person. I don't scrapbook or make cute little things to put on tables or on walls or anything like that. I started making barrettes mostly because I didn't like spending so much money on stuff in boutiques and I didn't often find stuff that I liked for the girls at walmart. Let me tell you, once you start making stuff, you find yourself on a slippery slope. In my efforts to get my house ready to sell, I decided to tackle my "office" today. I have never referred to this room as my craft room because I don't craft, I just make barrettes. After I organized my fabric and clips and buttons (in a rainbow of colors) and enough ribbon to stretch to the moon and rhinestones and paper and stamps and sewing stuff and binky clips materials and burp rag materials felt and my cuttlebug die cutter (oh ya) and the list goes on and on, I realized that I can't deny it anymore. Hello, my name is Laura and I'm a crafter. Here's a photo of what my office usually looks like:

This is generally how I work, in a total pigsty.
After spending my entire day trying to get it organized we have the "craft room"





There's really no denying the title when you look at it. I tried to stage it so that some other crafty woman would walk in when they are looking at the house and want to live here for the fabulous craft room. Any suggestions? I thought now would be a good time to get it all clean and functional since I'll be able to get so much use out of it now that we are moving.

Boxes boxes and more boxes

If there was ever a child that would be satisfied with a box to play with, it would be Jane. It's almost infuriating because she'll empty out anything to play inside of it. Annoying as it can be, there's something so fun about seeing a little kid play inside of a box, and there are plenty of boxes around here at this point so she's basically in box heaven right now.





Jane made it look so fun that Lizzy even gave it a try.



but she couldn't really figure out how to get in and out, so she just hung out in the opening.
Our garage is already filling up fast with boxes. We've got a lot going on in next few weeks, so we've got to get going on all this moving stuff. My sister in law watched the girls for me today so that I could clean and pack and I got so much done! I'm usually just exhausted all day, but I had a lot of energy today. Perhaps it's all the pressure of getting the house on the market, but it was great to be able to clean without little children following me around, pulling clothes out of drawers. Thanks Shelli!

The primary colors are one, two, three

Oh yes, the house has a red room too.

This is the master bedroom. We'll want to tone it down a bit, but it's a nice space with good lighting, so what's a can of paint compared to that?

When I woke up Saturday...

...I pretty much thought it would be like any other day. Little did I know that Brent had other plans.

Let me start out with some background info... We bought our house about 5 years ago and were told by everyone who has lived here for a while that they gave us 5 years and 3 kids before we grew out and needed a larger house. Apparently that has been the story with this home as long as anyone can remember. Admittedly, we feel a little tight and the thought of adding another body to the place doesn't help. I've also had a lot of complaints about the design of the house (a split entry) because it doesn't allow Jane, and soon Lizzy, access to the yards to play and when they are out, I am always there because I can't see them. We have talked about eventually remodeling or this or that to try to make it work. We've done a TON of work on it to make it just the way I like it so that I would at least love what it looked like even if it was awkward for us.

Well Brent was thinking about this all Friday night while I was peacefully sleeping and felt like he should check in the circle above our street for homes for sale. The next morning he felt the same way and so he went. Surprise, surprise, there was a house that was just listed. He showed me the info and it seemed like it would be just right for our growing family, so we called the agent. She happened to be in the area and the family was out of town, so we went over right then to look at it. Anyway, after a lot of talking and thinking and praying, we're buying it. Bizarre! I was SO not planning to do this right now!

This is it!



After several coats of paint, this would be Jane and Lizzy's room. It's a huge 'bonus room' over the garage that is being used as a play room, but we'll stick some beds in there too so that I can have a nursery and an upstairs office for my Lou Lou stuff. Jane just looks at this photo over and over and talks about where her bed will go and her kitchen, etc. etc. She's been through the IKEA catalog and picked out her bed and dresser and bedding and toys and the color of the walls. The girl is a little too much like me.

Design wise, it isn't my taste. For example, here's the master bath...

but in time I hope to be able to change that. It will be SO hard for me to leave my new kitchen and carpet and bathroom and my kids rooms that I worked so hard on, but this could be a new adventure, right? I'll certainly have plenty to keep me busy with Leslie's house that needs a lot of work and my mom's house that STILL has no draperies hung (sorry Mom) and a new baby and watching Ben this summer while Leslie studies for the Bar. Am I insane? (please don't answer that question). None the less, I've finally been able to get excited about moving, or rather, I've been able to get excited about designing a new space. Moving and selling this house is another story. So if any knows a person that wants a really nice house in a really nice neighborhood, please send them our way. And wish us luck, we're going to need it.