Sunday Scribbles

I gave Jasper a sheet of paper to doodle on during church last Sunday.

Here is what he came up with:

Before Jasper, I can honestly say I would never have known what this drawing was.

But now I can quickly identify a football play when I see one. I still don't know what it means. . . but at least I know what it is!

Conference Sunday

For my church's General Conference this year, we went to my sister Heather's house in Lehi.

We laid around, watched, listened, ate and played.

Oh, and Anne-Marie slept. The whole time.

Jasper made up a fun game (for him) called "hide the ball from Jackson."

Jackson, where's the ball?

Where is it now?

Did you find it yet Jackson?

We love Conference Sunday.

My Sunday Boys

Jasper and Jackson got some new Sunday clothes.

They match, and are the cutest pair at church.

Notice the sticker on Jackson's forehead - I love to leave it on and see how long it will stay.

Usually it makes it until we're home a few minutes, its then wrestled off by Jasper.

CHEESE!

Quiet Book

I came across this blog

http://quietbook.blogspot.com/

and now I totally want to make a quiet book for church. I almost hate church right now because Jackson is very much a toddler. Stickers, snacks and crayons keep him busy for a little while, but we have to take him out to the foyer every Sunday and it causes me severe stress and anxiety.

Luckily he is old enough for nursery this coming Sunday! I am stoked, and hope he LOVES it, and doesn't cry when we leave him there.

Anyway, I want to make a quiet book, and this blog looks AWESOME. It gives all the instructions and ideas.

However - I'm having doubts. Mainly because:

• I have no working sewing machine (its on my list of things to fix that cost money).
• I am not crafty
• I am not patient and have been known to throw things across the room that don't work.
• This weekend I hemmed my IKEA curtains - using NO SEW hem, and am so good at crafty stuff that I cut off 18 inches too much! Yeah, I was pretty angry after that.
• I am already looking on ETSY for one that I can just buy, but none of them look as good as this one I could make and I am also too cheap.

Hmm.

I'll keep you posted.

Flashback Friday

New York City

I lived here the summer of 2003, with my good friend Amy who was also one of my favorite missionary companions. We served in Honduras together and she was my first gringa comp - which meant speaking English and washing our clothes in a bucket of soapy water, cutting our laundry time from 3 hours to 15 minutes.

Here we are eating some tasty watermelon in greenwich village...

This is the outside of our beautiful sublet in Inwood manhattan, our fire escape is the one with the yellow flower which the super made me move a few days later. . .

The inside of our crib. . .

And some curtains we made trying to beautify the place...

I love and miss New York and Amy.

Flashback Friday

I think it is fun to look at old pictures, so on Fridays I'm going to post an oldie and tell its story.

These are pictures of Jasper's baptism, when he was 8 years old (over 2 years ago). He looks so young, it's hard to believe I really knew him then, but I did. David and I had been dating a couple months when he was baptized. Such handsome guys. Jasper wanted his uncle Dave to baptize him, and his uncle Todd to do the confirmation. This is a good memory.

Fun with the scanner

My doctor's appointment went well and I'm still pregnant. I'm dilated to a 1 and I'm scheduled to be induced next Thursday the 23rd. I've been trying to cross my fingers that he'll decide to be born before that, but since I really can't even cross my fingers because they are so fat, he'll most likely be born next week.


I'm having so much fun with the scanner, I'm about to embarrass myself with these pictures, but I don't really care.


I served a mission for my church in Honduras, San Pedro Sula - and in Belize (2000-2001). Belize is small so it is not a mission itself, just an extension of other missions. It was once part of Guatemala, then Honduras, now it is part of El Salvador.

One of the first sisters I met in Honduras when I got there warned me "Sister, just so you know - the blessings of the mission are not physical." Luckily my two older sisters Heather and Becky who had both served missions before me also told me some of the horror stories and I had already resigned myself to gaining 20 lbs from eating tortillas.

But there were other physical yuckiness that I wasn't really prepared for, like flying ants, fleas in your disgusting 3rd world mattress that scarred my legs for years, HEAT, the never ending HEAT and humidity, worms, food that looks back at you while you eat it, etc.

It was definitely very humbling. And sometimes when I see the sister missionaries on Temple Square with their beautiful clothes, hair and make up, none of which I had on my mission, I just have to smile. I would've loved to look like that on my mission, but there was just no way. You can't wear a suit outfit in the middle of Central America - first of all its WAY too hot. Second, its impractical to walk 3 or 4 miles a day in one of those (we had no car or bike - people steal them and dogs chase you). Third, I gained so much weight I didn't fit into any of my cute outfits anyway after a month in the field, so it was down to jumpers and skirts pretty quickly. And there is no point in wearing makeup when it literally melts off of your face 20 minutes after application.

So this was me in the MTC the day my parents dropped me off. Look how cute and naive. I even have the lovely dork dot.





And this is a few days before I went back to Utah (I have better, more painful looking pictures, but they are packed up in boxes and I'm too fat to get them down, plus I will spare you).

It was right after 9/11 and we were at the Belizean airport. I'm the one with the back pack on my lap hiding my tummy. I showed this picture to Jasper, hoping he wouldn't be able to identify me. But he found me right away, and said something like, "you're all shiny like a football player."



I guess I'll make a lame comparison to pregnancy and say that the blessings of being pregnant are not physical. But the pros definitely outweigh the cons!

Mismatched

While we were at church yesterday, I looked over at Dave and couldn't believe what I saw.

First, his suit buttons. I took his suit to the dry cleaners over a month ago, and while there the cleaners guy didn't want his buttons to fall off so he put those one plastic things through the button holes to keep them in place. You know, those plastic fastener things that connect a price tag to a shirt you want to buy? I don't know what they're called, but he used those to temporarily prevent his buttons from getting torn off while being dry cleaned.

Anyway, I looked over at him and he had two or three plastic fasteners in every single button of his suit, including the buttons on his coat sleeves, and the button on his pants above the zipper.

*Picture I borrowed from the Internet.

Then, I saw that he was wearing mismatched socks. Not only mismatched, but MINE. One of my brown and white striped socks (his suit is dark gray), and one of my pale purplish gray socks.

Ahh!

I felt bad, because obviously this means I am way behind with the laundry, especially with the sock laundry. And it also means that I need to remove the temporary plastic tags as soon as I get back from the cleaners, because David surely won't be removing them from his buttons on his own. He didn't even care - or know what they were.

It did give me a good laugh though, and I was alert through the rest of Sunday school.

:)

Peep Lover

There are two kinds of people in the world. Those that love peeps, and those that hate them.

I'm a lover. Usually when I buy a package, I eat the whole thing while I'm still in my car driving home from the supermarket. I've eaten them fresh out of the package, stale, and blown up in the microwave. They are delicious any way for me.

I heard a rumor that my Uncle Steve is also a lover of the peep. Anyone else?