Shoes

They say most women fall into two categories. There are shoe women and handbag women. Most women (not all, but most) prefer to spend money on one of those two things. I am definitely a shoe girl. I'll use the same purse every day for years before I change it. But I love shoes. A girl can never have too many shoes. And I like a high heeled shoe best. There are two pairs of shoes I found online that I've been coveting a bit. They are higher heeled than any other shoes I own, but they are beautiful. Of course I don't actually need a new pair of shoes, but these two pairs just keep calling to me. The ones shown in red I would actually get in white. I think they would be a great summer sandal. I know, the 5 inch heel might make them a little difficult to wear for too long, but I love them anyway. Almost every time I look for which black dress shoes I'm going to wear I wish I had this black pair. I do have a pair sling back black shoes, and I do like them, but I love this pair. I know, I don't really need more shoes. But if I had money to waste, both these pairs of shoes would be in my closet right now.

A break!

Today was bring a friend day at the Little Gym, where my kids take gymnastics classes. Obviously that means they can bring a friend to their class. For any of you who don't know, three days a week I take care of extra kids. Two of them go to school, but I have Marisa all day. Gym on Mondays was supposed to be my one on one time with Becca, but since the first of the year I've had Marisa with me as well. Not today. She got to go in with Tyler! That meant that Becca and I had a full hour to spend together, just us. I didn't want to waste the time seeing as it takes half an hour to get uptown, but I also didn't want to just run errands. I wanted some fun time with my little girl. So we drove down the street to get ourselves a little treat. We went to Jamba Juice.
I haven't been to Jamba Juice in quite a while. I have a hard time justifying spending $4 on a smoothie I can make at home, and there's a smoothie place I like better closer to home. But we both felt like we needed a treat, so off we went. We had so much fun! I seem to be so busy that I don't get to have just play time with my kids, and certainly not one on one time. Becca and I shared a smoothie while we talked and played and laughed. My baby is growing up so fast, and I feel like I'm missing it. She's not a baby anymore. She is three years old and very grown up for her age. I am so glad I could take an hour today to take a break from my life and reconnect with my baby girl. And even on a cold, rainy Washington day, that smoothie sure was good!

Old things New

Does anybody recognize this dress? Ever seen it before? I'll give you a hint. It's pretty old, at least for me. This is a dress Dad bought for me at Nordstrom the summer before I left for BYU. It's 11 years old. I hadn't worn it in probably 7 or 8 years, but I wore it to church on Sunday. In fact, this is a brand new picture of me taken just yesterday. I can't tell you how amazing it was to be able to put that dress back on. Obviously I'm not nearly as thin as I was 11 years ago, but I'm obviously not nearly as big as I was a year ago either. And it just goes to prove that the number on a scale is meaningless. According to my scale, I've actually gained about 5 pounds lately, but obviously my body says otherwise. I'm thrilled to be in this dress again, as is Scott. This was one of his all time favorite dresses of mine, which is why it's stayed in my closet for so long. I'm not trying to brag or toot my horn, I'm just so happy to be wearing this dress again that I thought I'd share!

My little miracle

So here is my update on the 7 shirts that went through the laundry with a bright pink crayon.

The crayon is gone!!!

This was quite an ordeal. After spending a couple days bleaching and soaking and washing these shirts over and over again with no success, I was turned onto a nifty little product that, along with large amounts of elbow grease, saved the day. What is this magic product, you might ask? Here it is, Spray 'n Wash Dual Power. My little miracle solution!

Now this great product didn't work all on its own, and there is still a story here. I was given this magic product on Friday evening, but I had a ward social to attend that night. So after the social and after getting my babysitter home and my kids to bed I went to work on these shirts. It requires more than just spraying the solution on, you have to spray it on then use a butter knife to scrape the crayon off. It's a tedious process. Also, it says right on the bottle that this product is a skin irritant. That's putting it mildly. By the time I was done, a large portion of my fingers were literally white from being almost burned from this stuff. But I scraped it all off and put the shirts back in the wash hoping this would finally do it. I can't tell you how excited I was when I pulled the shirts out of the wash and they were perfectly white again. So I put them in the dryer and went to bed happy.
Then I got up Saturday morning with the intent of ironing the shirts so I could return them in perfect condition before heading out to Silverdale for the afternoon. I can't tell you how I felt when I opened the dryer and found the shirts covered in pink yet again. These were not the same marks having come to the surface again, these were new marks. I know because I knew these marks pretty intimately by the time I was done. These were not the same. They were brand new crayon marks all over these once clean shirts. I wanted to cry! I had done a load of my own whites in between drying these shirts so I can't begin to explain what happened or where these new marks came from, but there they were.
So instead of spending my morning running errands and being able to deliver nice clean shirts, I spent another two hours going through the same process of burning my fingers while scraping crayon off white shirts. By the time I was done, the hand holding the butter knife was so sore I could hardly straighten it. It's only now, two days later, that I'm starting to regain feeling in my pinky finger. I'm not kidding. It's been totally numb for two days. So after rewashing these shirts, you better believe they were line dried. There was no way I was putting them back into my dryer. We've had no crayon issues with the dryer since, but I'm not risking it!! But these shirts are now clean. I can't tell you how relieved I am to finally have that issue resolved.
Maybe once I've regained full feeling in my hands I'll try to get all the crayon out of my load of jeans from last week too! :)

So much for a relaxing day

There are four missionaries in our area who treat our house as sort of a second home. They're over quite frequently, eat many meals here, and even do their laundry here. They're really great guys who play with my kids and even help with picking up after my kids. One of them even managed to save Rebecca by catching and cradling her head right as she was about to hit our new hardwood floor after falling down the stairs. We love these guys.
They were over last night to do some laundry. We're more than happy to let them do it here because it saves them time and money. They can drop off a load, go and do some work, then come back at the end of their night to pick it up. It's much better than having to spend an afternoon at a Laundromat. But last night a bright pink crayon ended up in the wash along with a load of white shirts. And they went into the dryer with the crayon as well. Nobody noticed it until it was too late. And now I feel terrible. I have the white shirts of two missionaries covered in bright pink crayon. This isn't one of the soft pinks that isn't all that noticeable. It's one of the worst colors you could have had (except perhaps for the dark purple that went in with my jeans earlier in the week). So now instead of spending my day relaxing and trying to recover from my crazy week so far I will be spending my day pulling out every stain fighting trick I can think of to get this pink crayon out of these shirts. I know there are some of you who read my blog that seem to enjoy this kind of stuff (Jill), so if any of you have advice on how to get this out, I would love to know! Wish me luck!

My own good mail

With all the posts that have gone up about good mail, I was starting to feel a little jealous. But today I got my own good mail! I got a very surprise package of valentines (complete with candy) for me and my kids! I would have loved to take a picture, but the speed at which those kids ran off with their boxes of sweettarts hearts would have astounded everyone! And who was this fabulous package from? Jon and Valerie!! How sweet it was for us to get this great package from them. Having had weeks of nothing but bills and junk, it was a very pleasant surprise.

So this got me to thinking. Now that we have all of the original girls in the family blogging, what is it going to take to get our sweet sisters-in-law in on this as well??

Tomorrow...

I haven't posted a new blog in a few days. I did really well for a while, but I've been slacking a bit this week. In my defense, I'm exhausted. Beyond what is normal for me. Over the last four nights, I've had about 13 hours sleep total. 13 hours over four nights. That's barely over 3 hours a night. Last night was the worst with about 2 1/2 hours. At this point, I'm hardly functioning. So if I haven't felt inspired enough to post a new blog, I hope you'll forgive me. I should be better tomorrow. I don't have to get up to take care of extra kids and my husband will get my kids breakfast before he leaves for work, so I plan on sleeping as late as my kids will possibly let me. And then I won't get out of my pajamas all day. Tomorrow is my day off. Perhaps with a real night's sleep, I'll be awake enough to start posting again! :)

Candles

Y'all probably know that I LOVE candles. I burn them all the time. I have even been selling candles through Partylite for about 2 1/2 years. I had my first show for a couple of months tonight. I'd forgotten just how much I love doing these shows. I love sitting in a dim room full of lots and lots of candlelight and friendly people who are having a great time together. And this was a group I've done many shows with, so I feel almost like part of the group instead of the "consultant." It's always a party there with good food, lots of laughter, and lots of money being spent. :)
It had been a while since I'd even burned a candle at home, so it was so fun for me to light 21 of them at the show. There is just nothing like the glow of a lit candle. It is one of my "fizzy joys" of life. As soon as I got home I had to light some more. I just love love love candles.

Old Friends

This has been a week of reconnecting with old friends. I have a friend from high school I found a couple months ago on a networking site, and we've sent each other a few e-mails, but this week we've gotten back to actually chatting. It's been so much fun to reconnect with her and talk like we used to. I'm remembering more and more why we were such good friends for so long.
Tonight, my husband and I went out to dinner with an old friend. It was someone we hadn't seen in a few years. He's been going through some problems over the past year, and we didn't really know how to even get in touch with him. We finally were able to track him down and we got to spend a very pleasant couple of hours with him tonight. He'll be moving to Utah at the end of the week, but at least we got to see him again and we exchanged information so we can stay in contact.
Tomorrow we will be going out to dinner with some other old friends who we haven't seen in several years. We were engaged at the same time as this other couple, and he and my husband were even roommates at one point. We've missed them and talked about them a lot over the years, and we are really excited to see them again.
So it has been a week of reconnecting with old friends, and it's been wonderful. I'm going to do what Jill does and pose a question now.

How do you manage to stay in touch with those you love?

All Grown Up

I just had a rather adult moment. My sister (the one who is not blogging yet) just called me with a cooking question. She called me. I don't know if she tried to call Mom or Jennifer (the obvious choices) first, but she called me. And I was able to answer her question. I don't know why, but it made me feel very grown up, and like my whole family is all grown up. We're not kids playing house any more, we really are adults with adult lives and adult problems and adult solutions. I don't know why it took her calling me with a cooking question to make me see it, but I'm suddenly feeling all grown up. And I like how that feels.

Babies

A friend of mine just posted new pictures of his baby on his website. He has one incredibly cute little boy. I've never seen this baby in real life, and yet I'm totally in love with this little guy just from these pictures. How is it a smiling baby can have such power over me? A nice picture of a cute, smiling baby is all I ever need to put a grin on my face.

Progress

Rachel brought home a game board from school a few weeks ago, and for every 15 minutes she read with a parent she got to color in one of the shoes on her board. When we first started, she knew just a few words. In 15 minutes we could hardly get through a few pages. Mostly it was me reading and her repeating what I said. But in just a few weeks, her reading skills have improved immensely. I have been amazed at her progress. Of course we have our struggles, and nothing frustrates me like when she's already read a word half a dozen times and then suddenly can't read it. But overall I have been so pleased with her. It's so fun watching her try to sound out a new word, hearing her say the sounds one at a time under her breath before saying it outloud. I am so thrilled that she is starting on a path to a lifetime of finding joy in books. Books have always been a very important part of my life and I love that she loves them too. I posted this picture because these were her very favorite books to read. A Giraffe and a Half made her laugh every time!

Seminary

There is a HUGE difference between getting up to watch kids and getting up to teach Seminary. I had to get up at the exact same time, but my morning is completely different. I feel energized and happy. I loved teaching this morning. It was a wonderful experience for me and I find I'm actually looking forward to doing it again tomorrow. Who would have thought I would actually enjoy teaching seminary? I may actually volunteer to substitute more often. Am I crazy??

Morning Again

Today was my third day in a row getting up at 4:45, and it was supposed to be my last for the week. I only take care of these extra kids Monday through Wednesday. I was very much looking forward to having tomorrow to sleep in, at least as late as my own kids would let me. Unfortunately, that was not to be. I got a phone call just a little while ago asking me to substitute Seminary! Not only that, but she wants me to do it Friday too! So now instead of getting up at 4:45 three times this week, I will be doing it 5 times this week. What makes it worse is that I can't seem to get myself to bed at a decent time. I'm still not going to bed until sometime between midnight and 1:00. Four hours of sleep is just not enough. At least I'll be used to it, right?