Sleepovers at Grandmas

So we spent the past week at my mom's house for a little vacation. Patrick was working crazy hours last week and so I decided to go and visit my mom. I was missing her like crazy, I think we all were.

A few days leading up to our trip the girls kept asking how many more days left until we were GOING TO SLEEP OVER AT GRANDMAS HOUSE !! It was so neat to see the excitement that they had to #1. Go see Grandma and #2. Sleepover at her house.

This post is about our week back home, back at Grandma's. It was good, it was great. It re-energized me and I needed that.

There was a LOT OF THIS

and some of this (GRANDPA CAN YOU JUMP WITH ME ?)

and a trip to FARM COUNTRY - THIS EQUALED LOTS OF POINTING FROM NOAH

AND THREE PONY RIDES

You can't tell from Noah's face but he loved the pony ride. This was his first time, all other times he would cry when we would even get near the ponies. He kept rocking back and forth and saying go, go. He also kept patting the pony. So cute and for all of my kids to love to ride horses bring joy to my heart. (I used to have horses all the way up until College).

There was DINOSAUR SIGHTINGS AT THE DINOSAUR MUSEUM

There were WATERFALL DISCOVERIES WITH GRANDMA AND GRANDPA

IT'S TOO LOUD GRANDPA

BRINGING HOME ROCK PETS

THERE WAS LOTS AND LOTS OF THIS

AND IT WAS EVEN WARM ENOUGH FOR SOME OF THIS

AND IT WON'T BE A PROPER NIGHT AT GRANDMAS HOUSE WITHOUT ONE OF THESES

It was a wonderful week and I can't wait to do it again. We are planning on going up to Grandmas again in two weeks and bring her back with us for a visit.

Things are still crazy around here. We emptied some stuff from the garage on Saturday. Spent most of the day doing that. Still have a lot to do though.

Worked a little bit on my Project Life album today and it felt so good. I miss it and can't wait till things slow down around here so that I can do more of it and more actual SCRAPPIN' as well. Until next time.

Project Life Week 13 and happenings around here

I'm baack !! So sorry about being MIA and all. So here are a few things that have been HAPPENING AROUND HERE.

The big move into our own house three weeks ago (wow, seems just like yesterday)

Went to Patrick's open house\family bbq at his work this weekend.

A certain someone's 2nd Birthday. Happy Birthday Noah !!

Katelyn lost her first tooth and had to play tooth fairy for the first time !

Right now all three kids are on Antibiotics. Noah's foot got infected, and the girls had strep last week.

Planted a small garden.  The first attempt did not go as planned. More later on that story.

Unpacking, and still unpacking. I swear the boxes keep multiplying.

Painted the girls room pink, one wall in the family room green, and another family room wall brown, still have another big wall to go and then the kitchen to finish painting. Can I just say that painting with a toddler in the house is impossible. He is so into HELPING right now that we have spent many late nights painting so that we could get it done with Noah was asleep.

Oh my, I forgot about our Disneyland trip. We drove down to Disneyland to Celebrate Patrick's birthday and had so much fun.

The girls now have bunk beds in their room.

Well enough about the happenings around here. Here is a look at the next week in my project life album. I know, I am so far behind. But I will get caught up. So here is week 13. March 28- April 3.

This week was filled with online house hunting, lots of calls to California, lots of furniture shopping, and lots of excitement and anticipation about moving to a whole different state.

This is an extra page I added in for the week. We took a trip down to California to go and find a house. So I wanted to journal about our trip and what I was feeling about the experience. It is a 12x12 sheet of cardstock that I trimmed down to 4x12, took a regular page protector and stitched down the side. Nothing to fancy as I am so far behind in my book that I really want to just get it in the book before I forget everything.

This is the other side of the journaling. It finishes up our weekends adventures in California.

I took a 6x12 divided page protector from American Crafts and just cut the bottom of it of since I only needed spaces for four pictures total. The first one was a house that we were considering. I put the quote from Katelyn right on the picture before I printed it out. She says "This is so fun. It's just like on House Hunters. " Love that.

The next picture was of another house that was actually our first choice. But it was a bank owned house and It didn't work out. But wanted to include some pics of our adventures as we looked at houses.

This is the other side of the other extra page that I added this week. The first picture is a pic of the front of our new house.

The bottom picture is of the kitchen of our new house.

 This page was mostly about our trip. The first picture is of Katelyn playing with all of her toy story toys one morning. She has such a great imagination and I love to watch her play with her toys and act things out.

The second picture is of Noah at the park down in California.

The small journaling card has a paint sample stapled to it that I picked up while we were down in California.

The small picture is of Noah in the backyard of our house. At that time it was all dirt, since then the builder has added grass. You will see that in the book later in another week.

The next big picture is of Maddie and Patrick swimming.

The next picture is of the beautiful green, rolling hills that we drove through on our way home.

That concludes Week 13. Thanks for looking. I really need to go to bed now, it's late. Until next time.

Project Life Week 12

Here's another week finished. This week was awesome. It was a life changer to say the least. And also an answer to a prayer. You see Patrick received a job offer late Monday night of that week. So here it is.

I have been trying really hard to save us some money by using coupons and searching online sites for great deals. I usually go out on Mondays to do my shopping because the ads come out on Sunday. The picture is some of the stuff I was able to get for pennies on the dollar.

The next picture or journaling is Patrick's job offer. Instead of doing a screen shot of the email I just copy and pasted the info that I wanted to make sure I included. Simply amazing. The email came in late Monday night while Patrick was still at work and I was chatting with him over IM. We were both very excited about the job offer, where it was, and the paycheck.

The next picture is of the next morning after we told the girls that we would be moving and that Daddy got a new job. We were all so excited that we had an impropto pillow fight. I think the girls were more excited about the fact that we will be real close to disneyland than anything else. That is all they cared about. Every time that they would mention moving when daddy gets a new job they just wanted to be near disneyland, actually Maddie requested being right across the street from disneyland, just like the hotel we stayed at !! I kept telling them that we would not be living in a hotel !

I also included the mortgage guys card that I contacted on Tuesday to get that going. Because Patrick started work less than thirty days later.

Here is the other side.

We spent lots of time online looking at houses. We also planned a trip for the next weekend to go down to find a house. Our first home !!

The next picture is of Jimmer Fredette and the BYU cougars. I am not a BYU fan but I loved watching this kid play basketball, he has an amazing shot. They played in the sweet sixteen game but lost in overtime. So sad.

This week was when Noah started saying some real words. It was a real breakthrough and we look forward to having him say more words in the future.

The next picture is of Patrick's new toy, or should I say the family's new toy. They were having a closeout on the old Ipad's when the new ones came out and so we bought one, only after hunting around the city for one. That weekend was also the Scrapbook Expo. One of the years funnest events in my book !! Two days of no kids, shopping, and cropping. What else do you need !

No extras this week. It was busy. No time for extra events. Hope you enjoyed it. Now I have to pack again. Move #2 is coming soon !! Take care everyone.

Project Life Week 11

I took a little road trip this past weekend and took my mother back to her house. We miss you grandma. Or should I say gamma (that is what Maddie calls her). We also attended for a short time a charity crop that we had signed up for months and months ago and it was so fun. It really turned out to be a great weekend despite all the driving. The getaway was exactly what I needed to recharge my batteries and get ready to pack up the house and move into our new home next week. We should be closing next Monday the 16th. So excited.

Anyways I finished up some of my project life weeks and have one to show you all. Now this is the one that I gave you a sneak peak on earlier. But it is all done now and I added two extra pages for the week. Here is side 1

 The first picture is of the kids saying goodbye to daddy as he was off to Wyoming to go and do his second interview.

Since the weather has been nice the kids have ventured outside and Katelyn rediscovered an old bone that she calls her dinosaur bone !!

The little picture and then the next picture were from Patrick's trip to Wyoming.

The next picture is of Katelyn and her worm. This girl loves bugs, and she is not afraid to pick them up, play with them, ect. She loves it !! Maddie on the other hand would not touch it.

Here is the first side of the extra page. Paul and Tona, I hope you don't mind this being posted.

This is some pictures that my inlaws sent to us from Greece. They are serving an LDS mission on the Island of Cyprus, Greece.  I used one of Ali Edwards long journalers and resized it to a 6x12 page. I printed the journaling on it and then printed the pictures to go on top, like a hybrid page.

Here is the second extra page.

This is an iphone picture that Patrick took while out in Wyoming for his job interview. They took them out to a job site at 3:30 in the morning so that they could experience what it was like. I asked Patrick to write about his experience that day and added it to the bottom of the photo. I think it turned out great.

Here is side 2

The first photo is of Katelyn's dance recital. Her class was through the community center, she had so much fun and I hope they have some of the same kinds of programs here in California. She is the tiny dancer on the very far right of the picture.

The next picture is of Katelyn's cereal bowl the morning on St. Patrick's day. The night before I had put some green food coloring in the milk and turned it green. The girls were so excited to find green milk in the fridge and came running in to tell me that we had a leprechaun come and change our milk green !! So fun. And of course they had to have lucky charms on St. Patrick's day !! The little picture is of Katelyn all decked out in her green right before school.

The next picture is of a drawing that Maddie did for me. She brought it to me that day and said that she had drawn it for the scrapbook, so in it went for the Picture of the day. So cute huh !! It is of Rudolph.

The next picture is of the first blooming flowers in our yard. I just love to see blooming flowers because that means that spring is coming and warmer weather.

That is it for Week 11 and I have one more thing to share with you today. Before I left for the weekend I was busy making two scrapbook layouts for the California State Fair. I have been entering in the Utah StateFair(and done really well) the past three years and thought that it would be fun to enter into the California State Fair as well. We shall see how this year goes and maybe I'll enter next year as well. It is kind of a pain because I had to mail my entrees in to the fair. I'm not sure it is going to worth it but we shall see. I think they turned out really cute, especially the first one. Here they are. Click on the picture to make it larger. What do you think ?

Here is the second one

It is late and I need to go to bed now. Thanks for looking. Take care now.

Easter, the ocean, ect.

So life is still going strong. Crazy as ever. I thought that I would share some pics with you all. The first week we were here these two items joined the family. Brand spanking new and I love them !! Oh and before we left we bought a beautiful bed set. Patrick put the bed together and it is beautiful. I can't wait until we move so that I can unwrap the rest of the set. It will be like christmas.

We had a wonderful easter despite the bad start. I searched online for a free Easter egg hunt in the city, found one at 10:00 am. Perfect, I thought. Not to early, we will be fine. We headed out, maybe a few minutes late, headed in the right direction. Followed the directions to the letter but there was no community center to be seen. Did some searching again on my phone, looked up the Community Center itself and finally made it there. But we were too late, they had already had the egg hunt. The girls were very disapointed, tears even !! So again, got out the trusty phone and luckily found a local christian church that was hosting some Easter festivities that included a free hot dog lunch, bouncy house, train rides, face painting, and of course a huge easter egg hunt. Halleluiah I said. We headed over there in plenty of time and the kids had a wonderful time. They didn't want to leave. Here are some pictures from the event.

Bouncy House 

 Noah had this painted on his hand. He is obsessed with Mickey and especially Mickey Mouse. I can't wait to take him to disneyland in a few weeks.

Noah didn't quite know what to do at the egg hunt. But Patrick showed him that there was candy inside the eggs and to pick them up and then put them in his basket. He caught on real quick. Until he decided he had enough eggs and just wanted the candy inside !!

Katelyn and Maddie really did well, going as fast as they could to gather up the eggs.

Last Saturday Patrick and I had the opportunity to leave the kids behind with Grandma and drive down to Santa Monica. I just love the beach and it was killing me to be so close to the beach and not drive down and see it. The drive was beautiful, fruit trees, green hills, ect. It took about and hour and forty five minutes to get to where the pier and beach are. Well worth the drive, it is beautiful there. The weather was a little chilly but nothing to bad. We lucked out and found a great parking spot right by the water. We walked along the beach towards the pier and took some pictures along the way. Here are a few. Oh yeah, when we first got there it was so windy but thankfully it died down a little while later. After we walked around the beach and then the pier, we walked down Santa Monica Blvd. to get some dinner. The street performers are amazing and so fun to watch. We ate at this Chinese, Thai restraunt and it was so good. Overall a wonderful, amazing, kid free night.

Well I need to wrap it up now. Was hoping to share Easter Sunday with you but that will have to wait until next time. And I am almost done with the next Project Life week. Something is going on with my laptop and my printer. They are not communicating very well and no joke it takes an hour( I timed it) to print anything. Patrick is convinced its the printer and has to call Epson about it. Oh man, don't get me started about my printer frustrations. Another reason that I can't wait to move so that I can have my desktop back and get back to normal scrapbooking functions again. Also to unpack my scrapbook stuff. So stay tuned for a week of project life coming soon.