I love a bargain!

Here's something I love: I love when you go into a store that you weren't even meaning to, and find exactly what you need for half the price you were thinking it would cost. That's what happened to me today and I am stoked.

I had a bunch of errands to run, one of which was Target to try to find a little back pack for Burgundy to use as a carry-on bag for our trip to Chicago. I figured Finn would use his current backpack, even though it has only one huge pocket so it's not great for organizing little things.

I had to stop in a different store that was holding a skirt for me which the store in the mall didn't have the right size. So, ok, another stop, ugh. But then I go in and they have THE cutest little bags! With LOTS of pockets and zippers for organization, they are right out of the Pottery Barn kids catalog (which I might add, every single year, when their little book-bag issue comes out I drool over it because bags of any kind are an ultimate weakness for me - especially little, tiny, mini-sized bags for cute little people), and I even wonder if they are the ones they used for the photo shoots since they all have Ivy League junior names embroidered on them, such as: Sawyer, Mateo, Camden, Payton, Sennet,etc. You know, the ones you see in the catalog.

So, they had back-packs in 3 different sizes, PERFECT sizes for Finn and for Burgundy (who will now be going by Emmet & Makay), and even one that was a fun size for me, not too huge (just call me Walter). I LOVE it! Oh and by the way, these bags cost $6 for Indi's and $9 for Finn's and mine, when they are $40-$70 in the catalog. (score!) Cute, by the way that they chose the same colors. They had the red with blue, orange with brown and pink and purple. They both chose red. Cute.

Obviously they are super cheap since they are embroidered with names already, but for that price who the heck cares? I will either leave it as is, or I can buy a cute patch to sew over it. Things like that make me happy, and honestly make me glow all day long. Maybe that makes me materialistic and shallow. Maybe it just makes me a girl.

wow... annoying.

Hopefully you, dear reader, don't mind too much that this, my virtual Dear Diary, is usually a sounding board for my annoyance.

So, I have a piece of paper, a receipt as it were, from when we signed up for baseball saying that baseball ends on the 16th. We were going to go to Chicago on the 14th, but knowing that, we deferred our Chicago trip for a week so that Finn would be here for the end of baseball. Last week, Finn was sick and coughing his head off so we didn't go to baseball at all Tues or Thurs.

We got to baseball tonight, and there is no one to be found. Luckily there was a girl still in the recreation office, luckily she let us in even though the office was closed, and luckily she found a lady there who luckily was in charge of the sports and knew what the deal was. The deal was this - baseball ended LAST week.

This annoys me on several levels.

1st, I have an official receipt telling me it ends on the 16th and I even asked 3 people about it to make sure so we would be here for the final week.

2nd, we pushed back our vacation so Finn wouldn't miss the last week and he missed it anyway due to illness.

3rd, pushing back our vacation wouldn't be such a big deal EXCEPT that Cody has some mystery illness as of yesterday. Flu-like symptoms, feeling like shit. He has been in bed in the basement all day. If we were leaving tomorrow, I wouldn't worry about us catching it. I would feel bad leaving my sick husband, yes. But, and perhaps this makes me a cruel, heartless person, I am more worried about us catching it right as we have to leave.

So if we now have a whole extra week of being exposed to whatever the hell it is, well, if you know me you know how I feel about people in my house getting sick. Let's just say I dislike it.

So at the moment, I am highly irritated. In my head, if we knew it ended last week, we would be leaving tomorrow and avoid further risk of infection. As it is, if we are all getting a flu just as we need to get on an airplane, well then I suppose we will not be getting on a plane at all.

So, now, I need to stop being annoyed and be positive and think we ARE NOT going to get sick. It would probably also be helpful if I could say I AM NOT going to get annoyed. Easier said than done.

how much can you chew?

You shouldn't bite off more than that. For a while there, I thought maybe I had, but I finally got it all finished. You saw my photo/dream board. So that's done. Concurrently with that project, I was working on another project: the fishy bathroom re-do. I painted the fishy bathroom about the time I painted (& repainted & repainted) Finn's room. It didn't really turn out how I wanted it. I never loved the color.

So, a while ago, I told my friend Kelly that I loved the color of her bathroom. She offered me the paint she had left over which was super nice. Cody says I am no longer allowed to accept free paint under any circumstances. A free half-gallon of paint turned into a monster, as you will see from the pictures.

Kelly's husband does finish-carpentry and I'm sure what took me many weeks would have taken him like an hour to do, but you know, sometimes you just gotta do this kind of stuff yourself! I've often thought if my life was quite different I might have been a carpenter myself. Well, here is my foray into finish carpentry. So firstly, Lowe's cut all the boards for me. Then Cody RE-cut all the boards for me to the proper lengths I needed, everything else I did myself. I did this wainscoting, to imitate the look of panelling, whatever you want to call it. I also had to rip off a chair rail and all the baseboard. Oh, and I put up a frame around the mirror which I've always wanted to do, which I really like how that turned out. And I always forget to take decent "before" pictures until I am headlong into the thing, but oh well.

And one last thing, big thanks to Cody, for coming home from work exhausted, and going out to the garage to cut boards for me on several occasions with minimal complaining, to Jim & Paula for lending me your chop saw & nail gun (wish I had a picture of me wielding the nail gun!), to Kelly for the free paint, to Jeff for being great at what you do and inspiring me to want to do a good job to impress you and your wife (and for the free paint), and to Levi, who probably would have rather been using the nail gun, but who watched my kids for a while instead so that I could nail all the boards up... I couldn't have done it without you guys!!

FISHY BATHROOM: BEFORE

FISHY BATHROOM: AFTER

dream board

Thank you to my sister-in-law, Erin for telling me how to make this awesome photo board! It turned out great and I am excited to hang it up! It turned out Huge! The board part is 2'x3' not including the frame! It's actually going to be our "dream board" on which we put pictures of things we love and things we want. It'll act as a physical reminder to "put it out there" as it were :) I think I'm going to hang it above our bed. So I'd love to know what you think!

what does this dream mean?

I was going back to college. Cody and the kids brought me up to my dorm room. I was sad to be leaving them, and as I unpacked it all came flooding back. After all I used to do this twice a year. Dorms, apartments, houses, townhomes... moving in, moving out, etc. Although the memory was sweetened with time, I didn't know if I really wanted to be doing it again.

My dorm room was tiny, of course, and I was sharing it with some guy from college I didn't necessarily like. I needed everything. Laundry basket, garbage can, everything. In my bed, I realized the far wall of the room was shared from the other side with a dog kennel. I realized this when the lights went out and the room appeared like some weird two way mirror to show 20 dogs in cages. They were silent. I thought, how will I sleep with all the noise they are going to be making?

I missed my family. The characters were a conglomeration of characters from medical shows I've watched over the years. Perhaps I went back to med-school. There was JD from scrubs, Abbi Lockheart from ER, Avery - the black guy with pretty eyes from Grey's Anatomy...

I went out with my friends (characters) to explore the dorm. We got into an elevator that was acting funny. It brought us to the wrong floor. The floor was gutted and had all these punching bags and boxing rings set up. I was suddenly feeling overwhelmed and tore open my hand punching a huge punching bag. Afterward, I felt spent and slightly embarrassed and Avery told me don't worry about it, that's what this place was there for.

We went to get back on the elevator. The doors opened and it started moving up slowly, we almost jumped on and suddenly it plummeted, sparking, screeching, out of sight 50 stories down. I fell back crying, yelling we almost got on! Someone else said we WERE on it a minute ago!

I woke up to Finn crying.

June & the 4th

What a crazy June and what a fun first weekend of July we've had!

We've finally finished swimming lessons. The kids loved it this year, they both did extremely well. For me, it was great. Somewhat sad as it will most likely be my last year of "mommy & me" classes, but also a relief to be finished. Somehow it felt like I got absolutely nothing done for 2 weeks straight which is enough to drive me bonkers.

Finn is in the middle of his "Rookie" season of baseball. It is like a pre-tee-ball deal where they get the gist of the game, work on skills like batting and throwing, and have fun little games where they play all the high-school kids who coach them. He is really enjoying it. I was wondering how he would do with baseball as compared with soccer. He did enjoy soccer, he loved practices where we worked on drills. When it came time to play games, however, he didn't love that as much. My theory is with drills, everyone gets a turn. In a game, you really have to get in there and go for the ball, which is not really his style.

I did wonder how he would do with a more individualized sport such as baseball. I remember as a kid not really loving softball when it was my turn to bat, too much of a spotlight on me or something (which is funny when you consider how much I loved the spotlight later on when doing theatre. I guess it was just my younger age). But he is really loving it, so I am glad about that!

Also in June, we went camping. The kids have been sleeping together in Finn's room for a couple of months now, so they did absolutely perfectly on our trip. They had a wonderful time. We went up on a Friday and stayed until Sunday. Then Jeff, Kelly & their son Spencer joined us on Saturday. The kids had an absolute blast. We can't wait to go again!

As the 4th of July fell on a Sunday this year, no one in Utah seemed to know how to handle this as far as fireworks and celebrations. Half the cities did their fireworks Saturday and the other half on Monday, so we had an extra-long weekend. Our friend Levi stopped by on Friday and stayed with us all weekend until Monday afternoon. What a fun, relaxing weekend we had! The only bad part was that both kids were sick all weekend, but they were still in high spirits. Especially because Levi brought his dog, Rogue. He is a Mastiff/Rottweiler mix, so he is not little! What a good boy he was! The kids adored him.

On Saturday we went out to dinner downtown and went to watch fireworks up with Grandma Jean. On Sunday, we went for a lovely 2 hour bike ride along the river through Ogden then went to eat lunch at the Oaks in Ogden canyon. Once it got dark, the kids lit some sparklers. I had a great idea to make a tiny hole in the bottom of a plastic cup for the kids to hold the sparklers with (see picture). That way, they wouldn't burn their hands. I thought it was a brilliant idea. Cody called me the safety patrol. Ha ha.


Later this month, the kids & I are looking forward to going to Chicago to visit with Nana, Papa, & my sister's family. We can't wait! But there is a lot I hope to get done before then...

I hope everyone has had as wonderful a holiday weekend as we did. Love to all!