I Like and Don't

Nels likes the way I talk. This makes me happy. I'm a stickler (is that really how you spell that??) for making correct sentences, with, in my mind, correct punctuation. However, I am also somewhat of a lazy talker. I don't think before I speak very often. I omit and filter, yes. But once it's decided that I want to say something, there's not a lot of delay. As a result of my obsessiveness + laziness I often make weird and convoluted statements. Like the title above. I decided to write a post about things that I like to today and things that I don't. Only i wrote "I Like" then I remembered that I was going to write things that I don't like too. "and Don't" :) Reading that makes me smile. I think it's funny. And I love that I'm too lazy to have it make more sense. Like the day Nels was teasing me about . . . something. I responded, "Don't tell me what I am, and not." It doesn't make any sense --- but it does. I start down a particular train of thought and instead of revising and starting over, when it's not going as planned, just keep talking. If you add enough commas and parentheses, it will come out on top. :)

And there you have it. Pure unfiltered nothingness that you didn't need to know. From my brain to yours. :)

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I like . . . 

the sparse and random snowflakes falling so very slowly outside my window. Like they're too fluffy to fall in a straight line.

that it isn't windy today.

that it snowed most of the day yesterday, covering up all the ugly deadness that is December and January. and February.

sleeping in (till 8:30!!!) snuggled up next to my husband - who is like a heater. I like that he is all mine, and no one else's.

that even though I feel really ugly and fat right now, technically I've only gained about 5 pounds since the beginning of this pregnancy. :) I suppose there is one bright side to puking for 11 weeks straight. :)

that I only have 10 weeks left of this pregnancy. Not that I'm antsy or anything, just excited.



I don't like . . .

that I only have 10 weeks of this pregnancy left. It's going by very quickly, I don't know that I'm ready. I'm not.

that I have a new haircut and no hairdryer. I left it at my parents' house and have had the hardest time justifying the purchase of a new one.

that my iron has finally decided to give up the ghost (probably because I left it on for 23 hours and always unplug it by pulling on the cord). Not a huge problem because I am worried about wrinkly clothes, but because I honestly can't finish sewing until I have one.

puking.

that going to the store requires me to leave my house. And leaving my house requires me to bring my children. Bringing them requires them getting ready. Asking Lilie to do anything usually requires a great deal of patience that is in short supply.

that I still feel irritated with my middle child today. How do you get an obstinate child to obey? How do you stay calm when you have to repeat yourself 9 times, with every request? How do you handle being entirely ignored? I'm not handling it well.

that having clean clothes requires me to WASH them.

that at some point in your pregnancy, you're going to start feeling unattractive. Of course, wrinkled HUGE shirts, unruly hair, no makeup, dirty pants, a messy room, and a list of to-do's don't really help remedy the situation. :)

that I'm sitting here blabbing about what I don't like, instead of just changing it! The end.

She speaks to my heart!

How could you not love someone who writes a recipe like this:

Fancy Macaroni

Seriously one of my favorite places to while-away the day! :)

Icky Sicky

I'd just like to take a moment to apologize to all those who have been trying to contact me for the past week. I have been sick, sick, sick since last Sunday - my children and Nels have been joining in the fun intermittently. I have had no voice, therefore, have felt no inclination to answer my phone or call anyone with Christmas greetings. I love you all and will return your calls soon. I'm just still working on not having my head be overtaken by snot. Sorry.

We had a WONDERFUL Christmas at home. Together and happy. I will post pictures and info soon, but right now, I think I'm going to cuddle up in one of my favorite Christmas presents (a microfleece comforter), eat 4 or 5 oranges, and watch another episode of Man vs. Wild while Nels is out "jamming" with his buddies. :)

Have a fabulous time ringing in the New Year this week!

Negatory

Can you imagine being told that you have gestational diabetes one week before Christmas? I think I'd probably resign myself to dying and just pig out. :) Fat and happy.

Thankfully, that was not the case (the diabetes part, not the fat and happy part). If you have had to do this test before, I feel for you and I'm sure that you feel for me. :) Telling a woman 6 1/2 months pregnant to fast (boo) and then the only thing that you give her is a NASTY sugary drink for the next 3 hours! Are you kidding? The nurse kept asking me how I was feeling. How do you think I'm feeling??? I feel like I'm going to puke this disgustingness all over you and I haven't eaten in 12 hours.

So hooray for me. I am not gestationally diabetic. :) I can now go back to eating "whatever I want." Happy day.

Also, why is it that I only seem to get sick when Nels is very busy? This is a mean trick, Body, you hear me?

Today I am thankful for cheese covered bagels and oranges, a warm home and comfy bed, computer games, and a husband who is (going to be) willing to come home and save the day (if only he can make it before I feel compelled to just get up and save myself). ----- Also thankful for the two arms and two legs that will enable me to go make order out of the basement I have not entered all day, but which my children have been enjoying as I've slept for 4 1/2 hours.

Blogtastic

. . . I don't have much to say . . . but I don't want to go to bed.

Are you ever just so very tired, but you still don't want to go to sleep? For me, all the time. I think I may have a disorder. Nels has been working all the live-long day and he said that he may come home to me soon.

It's a week before Christmas, and instead of finishing one or all of my projects like pajamas and doll clothes, I have spent nearly all of the past three days painting the desk, doors, and trim in my girls' room. I don't know why I do this. Part of it is some absurd sense of nesting, I'm sure. Part of it is . . . umm . . . crazy. Obsessive. Procrastination. something. It's weird. That's what. However, the hardest part is done. I could now leave painting the rest of the bedroom until after Christmas, but I probably won't. And I will probably be up until the wee hours of the morning on Christmas Eve Eve :) finishing pajamas.

(By the way: I HATE trim that is not white. If you like shaded trim, that's fine, but one of the things that has driven me nuts about this house ever since we moved in is that everything was painted -- if not poop green or crazy sponged red, white, and blue -- it was painted dirty, off white, dingy grey nasty. How on earth did someone choose this color??? A color trying so hard to masquerade as white while all the while tricking the unobservant into just feeling icky and oppressed. --- Okay, that's just the way that I personally have felt when I have contemplated my surroundings in my basement for the past two and a half years. --- For heaven's sake people, if you don't prefer "Ultra Bright White" as I do, feel free to tint your white, I've got no problem with it. But DON'T go for "off white". It is NOT your friend. Off White: the worst color ever.)


On an entirely different note, tomorrow morning I get to go into the doctor for a blood glucose test. Fun, huh? I failed my screening. I hope it's nothing. I hope that it's just the hamburger and fries that I ate a mere 45 minutes before I got there --- because I was starving and decided to disregard the nurses advice to eat something "low carb". Low carb is not on my radar. I hardly know what that means. I love carbs. Carbs are my best friend. -- Have been since I was a child. Please don't tell me that I can't keep eating 5 oranges a day and "Death by Chocolate" at 10:30 at night! (not every night - just when Nels works until one in the morning)

Nels is home.
What a boring post. Obviously not meant for entertainment value.
Good night.

Fabulous Thursday Night

I'm not quite sure if I'll get around to doing my Fabulous Friday tomorrow, so I think that I'll just post tonight.

1. As of today, I am officially in my third trimester!
          That is just so weird to me. I can't believe how quickly time goes at times. Maybe that's part of the reason that March is such a perfect time to have a baby. -- You are so busy all through your second trimester with the Holidays, that by the time they're over you're practically there. We're really looking forward to meeting this new little addition to our family.

2. I'm pretty much done Christmas shopping.
          How great is that?! Other than some random things for stockings and whatever Nels finally concludes he would like, I'm D-O-N-E, done. Even better, almost all of my shopping was done from the comfort of my own bedroom, in my pajamas, while my kiddos played happily together. I love online shopping. I can usually find as good, if not significantly better, prices online - AND - every time a package comes in the mail, it's like early Christmas for me! I love it. -- The joys of planning ahead!

3. My tree is not dead.
         Even after a week and a half, my cute little tree is still sucking up water! Hooray! This hasn't happened in years!

4. It's supposed to get warmer this weekend! - And snow!
          If you've ever lived in Eastern Idaho, you will appreciate that it might actually make it above THIRTY degrees this weekend!! The past WEEK has been frigid. Negative numbers nearly every night -- and into the daytime. It was -12 as I drove Hazel to school this morning and is, even now, back down to -4. We've barely gotten into double digits during the day. Not even warm enough to make a snowman.

5. This day is finally over and this week is drawing toward it's end.
          It hasn't been a horrible day. It hasn't been a horrible week. But every single day this week has felt like it should be AT LEAST Thursday to me. It has felt so long. I don't know why. Nels has been sick the past two days. He's had fevers of 103 - 104 ---- and has been all but useless. :) Just kidding. I feel so bad for him. He's got so much to get done, that is getting pushed back as he lies in bed moaning and groaning. Poor man. This evening Lilie was complaining of feeling sick and I'm not positive that Elsie isn't coming down with it as well.
          On top of my little sickies, I ruined a project that I've really been looking forward to completing. I've planned on making a calendar / bulletin board for my bedroom out of an old - and big - frame that I picked up this summer. As I was finishing it up - with several irritating, but fixable mistakes along the way - I pushed the glass to center it better and cracked it. Right through the center. ---- As it is, I'm not going to stress about it at the moment and it will remain with its huge crack until some distant date. But still incredibly . . . frustrating.
          So yeah. It's been a decent week, but I'm ready for it to be over. I'm ready for Christmas break. I'm glad it's getting closer.

6. We have a name for our new baby!
          The girls (Hazel and Lilie) ask Elsie all the time things about having a new baby. Things like, "Are you excited, Elsie?" To which Elsie gives them unrelated answers, because she doesn't really understand what they're talking about. :) She's an incredibly talkative little lady and has recently started making up her own words to things -- or at least her own meanings to words. Words such as "laslards". I have absolutely no idea what this word means to her or what word she is perhaps trying to say, but I laugh every time she says it. She has also been playing a lot with a shapes puzzle we have. I'll tell her the name of the shapes as she puts them in their correct place.
          So as my big girls were asking Elsie all sorts of random questions the other day, they asked, "Elsie! What should we name our new baby?!" To which she promptly replied, "Baby Otadon." So their you have it folks. Our next baby, by sisterly decree, will be named Baby Octagon. One of my all time favorites. So named by her sister, Fish.

(When I was pregnant with Elsie, Hazel insisted that Fish was a very nice name for our new baby.)

7. I have fingernails.
         That's worth posting about, isn't it? Of course it is. I've always been a compulsive nail biter. - Not something I'm proud of, but a habit that has been with me as long as I can remember. I've gone through brief spurts of reform in the past few years, but in the end, I always seem to regress. I've learned, however, through these sporadic periods of self control, that I have kind of thin nails that are prone to chip and break easily. Well, with the help of some serious introspection and the joys of pregnancy hormones, I've been able to achieve something that I have coveted of others (especially my SIL, Melyni) for most of my life. Healthy, long nails. {{{satisfied sigh}}} I don't know if it will last, but I'm relishing it for now.  ((Melyni, I honestly think that you have some of the prettiest nails I've ever seen. I'm not, by nature, a jealous person, but I wish I had nails like yours. Heck, I'd even settle for nails like Nels's. Such perfect nails should never be wasted on a man! :)

8. I have creative children.
          I was just thinking that I couldn't think of anything else for now. That my brain had come up with all the fabulous things it could think of in its sleep deprived stupor. Then, I looked down at the desktop next to my hand and saw the word "MOM" etched there in my sweet Lilie's adorable handwriting. It is also scrawled in the file cabinet drawer to the right of me. I thought of how I could rant about how irritating it is to me that my child feels the need to "leave her mark" wherever she sits. That she has defaced several pieces of furniture here in the basement. But you know, as I looked at it, it brought a smile to my face. Of all the things she chose to write. MOM.

I love my girl.

Oh Christmas Tree!

Each of the past 5 years, I have had serious trouble keeping our Christmas trees alive. Nels claims all sorts of reasons (that all stem back to me) - things like I put too many lights on or always buy our tree too early in the year. Things that irritate me and that I flat out don't believe. I am a firm believer that Christmas trees should go up soon after Thanksgiving. I also love live trees. I ALSO can't seem to help myself when it comes to the number of lights --- it's compulsive.

This year is my last ditch effort. And regardless of what Nels says or my own personal affinity to live trees, if it dies this year - that's it. But I am POSITIVE that a live Christmas tree that is well watered can easily live for one month in the house. I've tried different tree lots. I've tried different varieties of trees. This year, we decided to get our own! I purchased a permit and we headed up to Kelly Canyon to find us a tree!

The girls were so excited! and we had a wonderful afternoon together as a family, tromping through the snow. Mostly.

Hazel was a real trooper and held her own the whole trek, Lilie required occasional piggy back rides (due to snow getting in her boots), and Elsie thought it was fun, at first. But it was a cold evening and she was less than impressed when I would put her down. -- As can be seen on her sad little face in this photo.

Needless to say, between carrying Elsie and occasionally Lilie, hiking up two decently steep hills through the snow, and being nearly six months pregnant ---- by the time we got back home, I could literally barely lift my legs.

I'd do it again in a heartbeat! :) I'm feeling good about our "skinny" little tree. It's unique. The girls and I had a wonderful time stringing cranberries and decorating.

I love this time of year!

Fall Updates

HALLOWEEN: Part II - Pumpkin Carving

Goofy people.

She gets it from her dad.

(Who probably gets it from his mom! :)

The girls drew out their designs for their pumpkins and then Nels and I cut them out. I love the funny things that they come up with every year.

MY GIRLS: Snaggle Tooth, Sloth, and a Tired Turtle

Hazel has lost her teeth faster than any other kid I know. SIX so far. I truly was hoping that this time wouldn't come as soon as it did, but apparently we're in for quite a few years of teeth that look too big for her head.

One morning she looked like this.

By that evening, she looked like this!

With or without them, she's still pretty cute. :)

We're hoping Lilie's eyes don't fall out next! :)

This is what happens to little turtles when their mommies neglect their naps.

They just have to curl up in their shells and fall asleep on their own! :)

My New Old Chair

I have been working on several different projects lately -- most of which have been for my bedroom. It's been lovely. And fun. (And incredibly time consuming. Time mostly spent staring off into space just thinking and stressing.) I'll give a comprehensive post of them when I'm finished with . . . I'd say all, but there's always something on the back burner . . . how about when I finish the next three of them. :) My bulletin board, white shams, and throw pillows. I hope they'll be completed by the beginning of the year, but I've also got nightgowns and doll clothes to sew (as well as a long-ago-promised blanket to bind :) and nearly completed treasure boxes to - well, complete.

This is one project that I finished a month or more ago and actually took pictures of! With the purchase of Nels' new computer, we moved our old one up to our bedroom. I got a new (old) desk from the thrift store and painted it a beautiful turquoise blue, but I needed the right chair. I found this little beauty at another thrift store and knew she'd be the one . . . with a few tweeks.

Can't you just SEE the potential?! :) After fruitlessly searching the local stores for any fabric even remotely attractive, I finally found what I was looking for online. (Oh, how I love online shopping!)

I love colors. I love bold prints. I love new - old things. I love spray paint.

Isn't she gorgeous?! I love my chair so much! It makes me happy every time I see it!

KETCHUP!

If you don't know that joke, you should.

So it's been quite a while since I decided to really update my blog. I'm not quite sure why I've been avoiding it, but I think it's one of several of the following:

A) we've switched computers, my picture folder is on the other computer and hasn't been moved yet.

B) I delay posting until I have my pictures ready -- and I don't always like editing my pictures. It's a procrastination thing.

C) the baby is sucking my brains out.

D) I do have things to say, but don't want to say them until I'm updated.

E) this time of year always seems to get busy with projects and such.

Yeah. Probably all of them. Mostly I'm just a procrastinator. --- Anywho. I'm going to update a little bit. At least the pictures that are already on this computer.

Near the end of October, an old mission buddy of Nels's was in the area doing some work and he and Nels had a good time hanging out while he was here. While his wife was up from AZ for the weekend, we took a day trip up to Mesa Falls, Island Park, and West Yellowstone. Thanks Casey and Tanya for a great day! We wish you lived closer!!

Lower Falls

What a cute family I have!

Got stuck in construction on the way to West Yellowstone.

Elsie is adorable!

Sadly this year marked yet ANOTHER summer without actually making it into Yellowstone. However, I seem to make it closer and closer each time. This time we actually drove up to the front gates! :)

It's slightly difficult to see in this picture, but this is what happens when you wipe your nose with the back of your hand too much. You get a permanent red mustache for a week! :) It spread clear from one cheek bone to the other. She's apparently very thorough and SO funny to me!

HALLOWEEN

I spent the week before Halloween making costumes and dreading the sugar to come. :) Hazel's was very simple, Elsie's only took me about an hour and a half, but Lilie's costume was the real kicker this year. Somehow or another I just can't refuse her funny costume requests! Last year, if you remember, she was a bat (still one of my most favorite costumes of all time!). This year was far more complicated, but lots of fun!

R2D2, Ewok, Leia

They were all oh so cute and fun! They loved their costumes and trick-or-treating. The night before Halloween, Nels got a call from an acquaintance wondering if he'd be interested in working that day in Montana. Never one to turn down work or money :), Nels left us and I hauled the girls to Utah for trick-or-treating with cousins.

Isaac, Eli, and Ali