We are home!

It's been two days and already I am wondering how we lived anywhere else. This place is so incredibly, unbelievably perfect. The kids like their new rooms and LOVE having a playroom all to themselves - I love it too because there is only ONE room in the house they can destroy! I am in serious love with my new kitchen, which is so spacious that I had room to put all of my scrap supplies in one of the cabinets. Today I stood at the kitchen island and scrapped while the kids were having lunch. I did my circle journal for the month, worked on stuff for Emily's wedding, and finished pages from Morgan and Maggie's wedding last month.

We leave the day after tomorrow for Em's wedding... I have serious laundry to do between now and then! 

Yay!

We are all moved in and the computer is hooked up. I am exhausted! I can't believe how sore my legs are from walking up and down the stairs all day yesterday. We haven't unpakced a lot of stuff yet because we are leaving in 3 days to go to Rochester for Em's wedding. But it is so nice to be in our home finally!

I guess our prayers worked...

...because it is bucketing rain right now.

Praying for rain...

Now that we have grass seed in the backyard of the new place, we've been hoping for rain so that Matt doesn't have to go up and water it all the time. It actually did rain today after we left from doing the walk-through. Matt says he feels like he lives in Melba, Idaho again.

I taught a class at the scrapbook store tonight. Last month I did 'Stickers, Rub-ons, and Fonts' and two people signed up. Tonight I did 'Stretch your Scrapping Dollar' and one person showed up. Talk about embarrassing. I guess that the next time I teach, no one will show up, and the time after that, negative-one person will attend. (I think how that would work is, one person would take the class, but she would come away actually knowing less about scrapbooking than before the class started.)

I have finished one of the scrapbook pages of Morgan and Maggie's wedding. I killed two birds with one stone by doing it as my Design Team project for July. The challenge this month was to create a page inspired by a magazine cover (either real or fake). I used some of those sweet new American Crafts rub-ons (the ones I've been dying to buy, but can't, because I am on a self imposed spending freeze until fall). It was a lot of fun, although I really shouldn't be so impatient becuase all of my lines of text are slanted.



I knd of wish they would have gotten married in Provo or Salt Lake or something... I used up a lot of M's and G's with this layout! ;-)

Here comes the bridesmaid

It's less than 3 weeks until my sister gets married (I'm sure Em can tell us the exact number of days...) I got my dress back from the alteration place on Friday. I had to model it for Matt last night and I felt so pretty! Like a beautiful beautiful princess! I'm extremely grateful to Emily for putting us in dresses that are actually attractive (no orange taffeta monstrosities here!) and not super expensive. And she let us pick our own shoes... I got mine at Payless!

The nice thing about there being so many girls in the family is that you have a ready-made bridal party. (The downside, as my parents are no doubt finding out, is... five weddings.) Catherine and I are bridesmaids, Laura is a junior bridesmaid, Molly is the ring bearer, and Betsy is the flower girl (a largely token designation, since we've all agreed that anyone who hasn't mastered putting her peepee in the potty, probably can't handle strewing flower petals before anyone's feet). Emily's friend Anna is the maid of honor and we will all look very, very hot.

Two weeks...

In two more weeks, we close on this awesome house.

I went over there today and walked around in our mooshy sod. (So don't wear heels if you come to visit us!) I took the kids inside and let them play around for a while. Betsy has already figured out which is her bedroom. (In case you're wondering, she gets the smallest bedroom, but it has a bigger closet than her brother's.) Betsy likes to make faces in the doorknobs, because they are all shiny and reflect her funny.

Porter is apparently a sun worshipper or something.

I have not fallen off the planet yet.

I bet the 3 people who actually read this thing are wondering where I've been! Don't worry... I've been keeping myself busy. I finally got my DVD's of the first season of NCIS, so I had, you know, 23 episodes to watch. I don't actually know anyone besides Matt who watches NCIS, but it's totally worth checking out. It's a bit like JAG, a bit like CSI, but it's also quite priginal and funny and well written.

In other news... Porter is an insanely good walker now. He can actually drink a sippy cup while walking, which is impressive because I have barely mastered that skill myself. I think he'll be talking soon as well. Today I gave him a big wet kiss on his neck and he said to me, plain as day, "MmmmWAH." (It's the noise you make when you kiss a fat baby's neck.) I'm supposed to take him in for pictures soon, assuming I ever get around to making the phone call to set it up! I gave him what Betsy calls a 'haircup' today, so he's not so shaggy around the ears.

Our house is almost ready to move into. Matt went up there today and informed me that we now have sod and seed, 6 bushes, and one tree. We close the last Thursday in July and move in that weekend. I can't wait!

More zoo pictures...

...as per my stalker, I mean sister, Emily's request. (Only four more weeks until she and Russell get married! I'm actually really excited too, since I get to wear an awesome dress.) Seriously, my new camera is the funnest toy ever. And if you think 'funnest' isn't a word, it's because all my toys are funner than yours.

They finally cleaned the glass at the walrus exhibit so you can actually see underwater now. It's actually one of my favorite exhibits, which is surprising if you know my feelings about the Dolphin Dome. The momma walrus likes to stand on the bottom with her head poking up above the water. I managed to get a shot right when the baby walrus, Nereus, was swimming by. I'm kind of fascinated by the walruses (walrus? walrusi?)... they are so hideous that they actually come full circle and start to be cute again.

They never forget

I, on the other hand, forget to update my blog from time to time! We had an awesome 4th of July weekend. Matt had both Monday and Tuesday off from work (his company owed it to him, since he worked like a DOG all last month) so we had a 4 day weekend to relax and goof off. We went swimming, went for walks, cooked out, and stalked the new house. On Monday we went down to the zoo first thing in the morning. I found that's a good time to go because not only is it less crowded, the animals are more active when it is not insanely hot.

My favorite, of course, are the elephants. The baby one was born last fall & he has not been out much before this. (Did you know that not only are they pregnant forever, but baby elephants nurse for 2 years?) It was awesome to watch. Another one was actually cooling off in their water hole, which I've never seen them do before. I was like 10 feet away from her. It was awesome.

new toy

I've been so excited for this! My new camera arrived yesterday from Amazon. I got a Kodak c533. My previous camera was also a Kodak so I was already familiar with the software and some of the features. (Mom - I'll bring it when we come for Em's wedding.) I've been having lots of fun playing with the new features. Here's a picture of Betsy I did using Portrait mode:



Something else I like is the ability to take really close up pictures of small objects. You wouldn't think that's important, but as a scrapbooker I can tell you there are lots of times when I could have used that! Here is a side by side comparison of old vs. new camera:



As you can see, I have flippin' sweet pencils! When Porter saw me taking pictures, he made a funny face for me. I honestly have no idea where this one came from.
It's lots of fun and I can't wait to scrapbook with new, improved pictures! We also got a new refrigerator yesterday. (It was a pretty busy day.) We found one that was on closeout at Sears but still had all the packaging on it! The kids had a lot of fun at Sears, surprisingly. I'm just glad that's out of the way!