I Love Lincoln

I love this scrunchy nose smile

And those long eyelashes. That I totally put mascara on this morning :)

I love Easton too, but he has been really hard lately. He screams a lot. Not like a loud scream but a "aack" type scream when he is mad at me, embarrassed or nervous. I hope he grows out of it. I have a feeling it has something to do with us moving. We bought him a trampoline a couple days ago for the backyard. It will be a few weeks before it comes in and we are having him earn it. We got the idea from Robert and Liz when they bought their kids a trampoline. He has to earn enough marbles to fill a wheat germ jar. So when he shares with his brother, picks up his toys, is nice, obeys mommy and daddy, etc., he gets marbles. Lets just say it will be awhile. :)

Oh so I am in love with our ward. There are some amazing people and everyone is friendly and nice. It was SO hard for me to fit into our other ward and this is just completely opposite. Or maybe its me?? I left Aliso Viejo loving our ward and I love the people in it, but it took so long! I think though that it ended up being a blessing. Oh, and I am in love with Nathan's job. It is fantastic. He comes home for lunch every day and he is home at 5;15 every night. He has energy when he comes home and loves to play with the kids more. He was SO drained with his other job. I'm sure that there will be times when the job picks up and he works more but for the most part I hope it stays this way. I'm just so incredibly grateful for his new job and our new home. We are truly blessed.

My very own blog

So I made my very own blog

http://emilysownblog.blogspot.com

It's just a place I can put my crafts and cakes and stuff. You can even stick it in your google reader since its not private! Hooray! Go check out the cake I made tonight! :)

this is how I shop

All of the below = FREE


Um I couldn't resist. I don't think Nathan would really ever be caught dead wearing this with his kids. He usually doesn't care about things but I think this wouldn't fly.

I signed up for an Old Navy credit card and they gave me $20 to spend in their store. This is one of those store credit cards that has huge rewards. Of course we pay it completely off as soon as we get the bill, so it's really just a way to earn more money to shop there! I shop old navy ALL THE TIME for clothes for my boys. They have amazing half of clearance sales. They had one starting today and almost everything pictured above was less than $2. My sweetest find were shorts for Easton that weren't marked as clearance but rang up at $2.24. If you have a girl, you are SO LUCKY as their racks are loaded with girl clothes. Usually there are not very many boy clothes. Oh well.

Being a girl I think its natural to LOVE new clothes. Now I may not be the most fashionable person on the planet but I still love to shop and wear new things. I have a very small clothing budget and thankfully I have found a way to stretch my dollar to the max. I like Old Navy clearance sales (although it's getting really old), Charlotte Russe clearance sales and then my absolute favorite, Tulle clearance sales. Every first tuesday of the month they have anywhere from a couple items to many items on sale for under $7. Most of the things I bought below were under $4. Can you believe that? I've seen this brand at Nordstrom Rack and it's super high quality stuff. Everything I've purchased from them I love! Sign up for their email list so you don't forget and check it out next month!

The black shirt below on the bottom right has a ton of cute detail. Love it. Oh, and the dress was $2.99

I also love 6pm.com. It's basically a shoe website that has a different deal every day or week. Sometimes they have entire lines of shoes for $6.95!!! Man, all these deals have got me crazy for clothes. But how could you not be??

stuff

Well I thought I had a few more pictures from Thanksgiving, but I don't. My family took all the pictures as my camera was running low on battery and I forgot the charger. GRRRR. We had so much fun EATING. Easton had SO much fun following Grandpa around literally all day. "Hey grandpa. What are you doing? Where are you going? Can I help? I wanna help, I wanna help, I wanna help". It was seriously too cute. My poor dad had to put up with a 3 year old all day (and believe me, that is HARD) but it was a great break for me! :) We saw New Moon and 2012 over the break. I actually liked New Moon...I hated Twilight, and 2012 was, well, an action-end-of-the-world movie.

Here's my two pictures:

I don't have enough pictures of Nathan with his boys. Trying to work on that one.


Well now we are back to reality. I like coming home from vacation. It's a little sad though since my friend Alicia moved over the break. Doesn't really seem real until Easton asks me if he can go to the park with Sage. :( Alicia was my first friend here, and she is the best. The first time I went somewhere with her we were talking about Easton's birth story and how awful it was and she told me that it didn't have to be that way and started talking to me about natural birth. I distinctly remember telling my sister in law about it and saying "she (meaning Alicia) can talk to me about it all she wants but I'm never going to do it!". HA! Famous last words right? I'll miss her so much, and Easton will miss his first friend Sage, but thank goodness for blogs and email and cell phones right? It will be an adjustment because I could always count on her to be at the park so I would have someone to talk to. (and someone to talk to about food and health and all that good stuff) Now I will just have to plan stuff (yikes). I love where we live because it allows me to meet a lot of people, but I hate that our ward/area is so transient because it's mostly apartments and rentals.

Since the only picture I have of Alicia is the one we took right after I had Lincoln and I looked like I just had a baby...I had to get this!

so cute

A tie for my little guy

I have not really touched a sewing machine for YEARS, but I heard about this site that had this pattern for sale and I got really excited. With the help of my mom I made a couple of ties and I am in love! I've always wanted ties for my boys but I really never found them (I guess I am pretty lazy and cheap when it comes to clothes for my boys).



So excited to make more! I need to make Easton one now...or 10. I SO wish I had a sewing machine!

Thankful

I have a million things to be thankful for. I'm thankful for my family, my kids, my friends, my husband. Yesterday Nathan got a phone call from his mom that made me SO grateful for Nathans job and for an unanswered prayer. Last February Nathan interviewed for a job up in Salt Lake. We were SO excited about it and it seemed like an amazing opportunity. After he flew up to Salt Lake and back we were pretty sure that he had that job in the bag. That next week we waited and waited and waited to hear if he for sure was getting the offer. At the end of the week we were SO bummed that he didn't get the job. Some other guy had come in last minute with more experience and got the job. Well, turns out the company had to lay off that guy.

I am SO grateful that Nathan did not get that job. If he had, there is no doubt we would have bought a house, thinking we were all settled. While being in Salt Lake sounds amazing, I am SO thankful that Nathan has a steady, good job (with lots of time off!!!!) and that we are living in a beautiful place with family and good friends around us. All I know is that our Father in heaven really knows what we need.

Happy Thanksgiving!

gosh darnit

Why did this catalog come today? I would like one of almost everything please. Especially this:

and this:

and this:

and this:

and this: (I really like the necklace too...)

And I just so happen to be driving to St. George tomorrow where they have a store.

One can dream right?

Cupcakes and Food, Inc.

I made these flower cupcakes for my sister in law's birthday yesterday. THey were a lot of fun to do.

While I was decorating these highly processed food items :) with highly processed sugar frosting, I watched this movie:

I like this clip too

I won't go into too much detail, because I really want to devote a whole post to how I feel about food and how I got to this point, but I really think that everyone who eats food in America should watch this movie. It was really eye opening and a lot depressing. I never understood the meaning behind the phrase "buy locally" until I watched this show. It was hard to watch the clips about farmers and how hard the big massive food companies are making it for them to even stay in business anymore. I am NOT an animal lover and I LOVE meat in moderation, but watching the conditions and treatment of the livestock that we eat was so sad to me. I just don't think it is the way God intended us to treat animals. It is disgusting that they put ammonia treated filler into our ground beef to make it "safer" against E.Coli. ANd it is unbelievable the amount of science that goes into our food, yet our food is making us sick. And of course the natural food is WAY too expensive and of course I can't afford it...yet. Making small changes a little at a time is the key to not going crazy.

Yep, I think I'm turning into a crunchy granola girl. Slowly but surely. But don't worry. I won't stop wearing make up or shaving my legs or washing my hair. At least not yet....just kidding. Sorry, now you probably think I'm a crazy person, but please watch it! It is worth your time.

An example of poor customer service is:

Making your customer cry.

Today I took our van in to get an oil change at our "favorite" mechanic. Well, he was my favorite until today! He has the cleanest waiting room, with toys for the kids and drinks and stuff. He remembers my name and is fun to talk to. This was the second time I had brought our van in to him (we had brought our other cars in too, but they never had any problems), and the previous time he said that it needed some work, but it wasnt imminent. So I thought I would just wait until the next oil change. So I get there and he gets my car up and it started. First he seemed a little upset that I hadn't done anything with the car in 5 months. Then I made the big mistake of asking him if he price matched. I explained that I would prefer to go to him for all of my repairs, but my husband cares about cost.

That's when he lost it! He started saying things like "ya if you want the cheap parts that Pep Boys and others will give you, you don't have to come here, I lose money on oil changes, go somewhere else, I don't care, tell your husband he's dumb (he didn't really say it but he implied it), I'll pull the plug on you if you only come in for oil changes..." I told him to get my car down and he goes out and I over hear him say "get the car down this girl only wants to use us as a Jiffy Lube".

I was SO MAD. When he came in I told him that I had recommended him to a lot of people because I liked him and I thought he was doing a good thing! I told him that in my defense, it didn't seem like I needed to do the repairs right then and there. Blah Blah Blah. I wish I could have recorded it so I could replay exactly what happened. Definitely started crying, he came up with some excuse that his back hurt so he was acting like an a**.

First of all, I think that asking if they price match is a legitimate question. When I worked at a nametag place price matching was what we did! Even if we lost money! We wanted to be the best so they would come back again and again and recommend all of their friends to the company.

Second of all, I don't care how crappy of a day you are having, treating a customer like crap who really only asked that question so she could give you her business is the WRONG business approach. I have a lot of friends who have cars :)

Third, make someone cry, they will NEVER EVER forget. No matter how many times you apologize.

Well, he gave me a free oil change (I had a coupon for a free one anyway), but I still am not over it and when I think about it I still want to cry. I've never been treated so poorly!

Whatever. I hope to never see George at B&M Auto Services ever again. Sure I'll forgive him, but that doesn't mean he needs my business!

Sea World and a big big mess

Today we took Easton to Sea World for his birthday. It was the last day he could go before we had to pay for him. He kind of had fun I think. He was pretty ornery...and it didn't help that we didn't let him go to the Shamu show because we were trying to get home so I could attend the General Relief Society Broadcast.

After I came home from the broadcast (which was so amazing and uplifting) I came home to this:


AHHHH!!!!! I guess that's what happens when there is a BYU game on TV. We threw Easton in bed because he was being so stinky (and told him all his toys would be on time out when he woke up in the morning because he refused to clean them up) and then I set to work on his birthday cake. After the birthday cake my kitchen looked like this:

Just what I want to clean up after a long day! Thankfully Nathan is going to pick up the toys (yes it's 10:15 PM and the toys are still everywhere. DRIVES. ME. CRAZY.)

Oh and to make matters worse. We switched Easton's crib to a bed again and much to our chagrin, when we checked on him, all the lights were on, he had woken up Lincoln, and put every. single. blanket/pillow/cushion/sippy cup/burp rag. he could find into Lincoln's crib. I was SO MAD! Then it took Lincoln 1 1/2 HOURS to fall asleep again. GRRRRR

P.S. the cake turned out okay. I'm semi-happy with it. There are some big mistakes, but I'm learning here right??? Can't wait to show it to Easton tomorrow!

P.P.S. Can't decide if I should forgive Easton and let him have his toys tomorrow morning on his birthday...he usually has to earn them back. If it were completely up to me I would say absolutely not. Dad's a softy, mom's a meanie :)

UG

I think I have a lot of posts that have the title of "UG". It's just been one of those days. Nothing seemed to go right today until Nathan got home. Thank heaven for Nathan. Love that man. Easton is not doing well with potty training. He is regressing big time. He used to be able to hold it a little better and now he is having major accidents all the time. Let's not even talk about poop.

I was supposed to bring a treat to our ward BBQ so I set out to make mint brownies. Well, I had written the recipe wrong and instead of 3/4 tsp of peppermint extract I put in THREE teaspoons of it. UM WOW. I realized my error and called my mother in law who informed me of the correct amount. I was already having one of those days and I was practically in tears as I scraped off the mint icing and tried to rescue it. Then when I put on the chocolate frosting on top of the mint frosting it just kind of smeared the mint icing all over the place. After I walked away from the project for an hour I realized they weren't that bad, but still a lot of stress for a stupid dessert. I ended up eating an 8th of the pan just to make sure they truly were okay to share. YUCK

Then I went to Lincoln's 9 month appointment. He's only gained 6 ounces in 3 months. He went from like the 90th percentile to the 45th. Doctor told me it was because of his constipation issues. I feel terrible. I mean I knew he was smaller than Easton ever was but I didn't think it could be because of his bowel issues. I hope Lincoln doesn't think I am always starving him. He's not really into eating lately. He eats a little bit, but not what I think he should be. I'm sure everything will be fine. We're going to try Miralax and prunes and other things like that to help him out. I did a good job clearing him out a month ago but I guess I got lazy again and Lincoln got pickier with his food. Poor little Lincoln.

I'm excited for this weekend. BYU is playing tomorrow. Hopefully I'll get to watch some of it! GO COUGARS!

Blah.

I've been feeling so "blah" this week. It just hasn't been my favorite. My kids have been driving me C-R-A-Z-Y. I just have this overwhelming feeling of needing a break, and when they go to bed to when I go to bed is just not enough for me! Easton is constantly in Lincoln's way. He sits in front of him when he's crawling, lays in front of him when he wants to go somewhere, takes away a toy he has just worked so hard to get to. Lincoln starts to cry, I get mad. Time out for Easton. Doesn't really work so it's back to it again and again and again. Any ideas? UG!

Easton only went poop that one time on Monday. I took away Gordon when he pooped in his pants, then yesterday I had to take away Thomas. They are just sitting on our mantle, waiting for Easton to decide to use the toilet again. Kind of frustrating! He also has a lot of potty accidents when we are out and about. If we are at home he does just fine. He'll do everything by himself even.

Fortunately for every annoying, drive-me-crazy thing that Easton does, he makes up for it with something cute. I love listening to him try and sing in the car. He knows most of the words to his favorite songs, but usually can't keep up with the music. My favorite is when he tries to sing the song by Raffi that goes "I gotta shake shake shake my sillies out shake shake shake my sillies out, shake shake shake my sillies out and wiggle my waggles away...".

This morning I just had to try and snap a picture of this. Lincoln was right by Easton and Easton was reading him a book. It was just too cute, and Lincoln seemed to be listening. Love it. Hopefully they'll be love each other more than they annoy each other.

Okay I NEED a nap!

and the worst mom ever award goes to...

ME!!!

I'm sure most of you know of our little incident this weekend, but I think there may be a few who don't, but I dislocated Easton's elbow last Friday. Nice huh?

Well we were at the pool and it was time to go and Easton decided to get back in the pool. Nathan was already dried off so I went in to get him. He was kind of in trouble just because he had gone in when we had said no. Well, I was helping him out, and I don't recall yanking him, but I lifted him from the first step of the pool out, so maybe a foot, by his fore arm and I felt it slip. He started crying and didn't stop. He was grabbing his elbow. We took him to the doctor and I thought for sure she would turn me over to the police or something for child abuse. Thankfully the doctor told me that this actually happens all the time. She told me that Easton might do it to Lincoln one day, or that if he ran into the street and I grabbed him that could do it too. I felt relieved, but still awful. Once they put it in a splint it felt much better and we actually went to the birthday party we were planning on going to that night. I'm SO GLAD that I went because as soon as I started talking to people about it everyone was telling me that "oh that happens to my kid, or my sister's kid, etc". It made me feel a lot better about myself. I am just paranoid now that it is going to happen again!

a beautiful beautiful thing

Today started out kind of crappy. I have the whole week off so I wanted to be super productive and involved and make the most of it. So instead of putting Easton down for a much needed nap, I headed over to the park for the park group in our ward, but they were dumping truck-loads of sand on the park so I just went home. Since Easton was beyond tired now, I kept him up a little longer, fed him lunch, and put him down for his nap. He had 3 poopy diapers in a matter of 30 minutes, it was ridiculous. He was just laughing and talking to himself and I could tell there was no way he would go down until I took desperate measures.

So I put him in the car (this is around 12:45) and drove around for probably 20 minutes until he fell asleep. Now, since I did his nap training 9 months ago, I have only had to do this one other time. Obviously an off day for baby Easton. I thought for sure he would sleep for at least 2 and 1/2 hours. I picked up the house and settled down to watch the movie "In America" (which was super good by the way), Easton woke up screaming an hour and a half later. Poor Easton!!

By this point, I was a little distraught and just wanted my day to be over. I went grocery shopping and took Easton to the park. Then after his bath, I fed him dinner, and THIS happened:




Hallelujah!!

I've been tagged again!

My friend Lily tagged me and I have to think of 12 things you may not know about me. Wow, 12 things, that's a lot. I think I've already done a post of "6 things you don't know about me" so I'll try to think of as many as I can, but if I don't make it to 12 don't hold it against me! I figure this makes a good journal entry, right? Here is my previous post. Okay, here it goes!

1. I have climbed Mt. Timpanogus twice. Once sometime during the first couple weeks of my freshman year, and the second in the summer after my sophomore year. Both times I started at about midnight to catch the sunrise at the top. AMAZING. It's about a 9 mile hike up and it is worth every step.


2. I LOVE grocery shopping. Like LOVE it. Every week I plan out my meals for the week, then go through the pantries and write down what I need. I go to three stores. Trader Joe's, Mother's Market, and Costco. I don't even mind that I have to go to three stores because I love it so much. I think it is because since we don't have a lot of expendable income, I have to satisfy my womanly need for shopping in some way, so shopping for groceries it is! :-)

3. I am a Veterinary Technician. I got my bachelors degree in Animal Science from BYU. I am embarrassed by this, partially because a lot of people think that you just get this degree online, or go to a two-year school (which you can but it's a crappy education) or even just learn it on the job (which you can). The VetTech program at BYU was excellent though, and I learned a lot of cool stuff. My favorite class (and the class I did the best in) was Parasitology. Loved it. The problem is, I will NEVER use my degree EVER again. I don't like it and I am afraid of working in a vet clinic because I don't want to be bitten by a cat or a dog. I've only been bitten by a dog, and it was at school. Also, if you ever wanted to know where the saying "sick as a dog" comes from, ask me, I know!

4. I am worried about the fact that Easton doesn't have very many words. Is he delayed? I mean, he understands almost everything we say. He knows some sign language, even made up a few of his own signs, like cars (rubbing his hands on his stomach and making car sounds...what?), and night-night, but his talking is just a bunch of gobbledeegook. I guess a lot of people know that, but I'm trying not to be worried...but I still am.

5. Secretly, deep deep down, I for some crazy reason want to have twins someday. What??? Did I just say that? Maybe the reason is because of my bad birth experience with Easton. And when I say birth experience, I mean labor, delivery, and RECOVERY. Might as well get two for one.

6. As a result from my bad birth experience, I want to have a natural childbirth with a midwife when I have my next baby. I want it to be a waterbirth, but I found out that's really not possible here in Orange County unless you do it at home, and Nathan would NEVER let me do that. :-) Everyone I talk to say that their recovery was much better and faster after a natural birth, and that is something worth trying out to see for myself, because it can't be much worse.

7. I ran a marathon in 4:45:11. I really want to run another one someday because I really want to beat that time.

I can't think of anything else really about me, but there ya go! If any one wants to do this tag, feel free!

Dilemma solved...somewhat

I think I figured out what to do about my scrapbooking dilemma! I have heard of it before and actually have made one for my parents, but it didn't really occur to me that it would be WAY cheaper, classy, and fun! You can make hardcover or softcover, and they have glossy, printed pages with your pictures on them. You can basically do whatever you want. I was talking to my sister-in-law Cheryl about my scrapbooking woes and she told me one of her friends just made a book about their trip to Spain or something and how cheap it was to do. So I looked into it and there are two websites that I found... blurb.com and mypublisher.com. I've downloaded both programs and I have started trying to make books. Blurb is actually WAY cheaper and has better layout options and better options all together, but it really slows up the computer. My Publisher is pretty expensive at 99 cents per page after the first 20, but it doesn't slow down my computer at all. Hmmmm.

Right now I am testing it and remaking my wedding book. (Nathan spilled water on the scrapbook that I made and every single page is completely ruined) so if I get that book and I like it, I will start this year doing our family books in this way. During the year I will put my pictures and journaling into the book and then order the book at the end of the year. and voila! My whole year is documented! Every kid that I have will have the first year scrapbooked for them, but after that it will go to the books. Seriously this is going to take a huge load off of me and I feel better already!

Zoomars

My dad is here this weekend and today we went to Zoomars down in San Juan Capistrano. I thought it was great! Easton loved to point and look at the animals and was not even scared!! Now that is something! Unfortunately it cost $18 for all of us to go ($5 per adult, $3 for Easton)but it was fun to see him with all of the animals. We just got back and we are enjoying In-n-Out and Easton is sleeping. My dad and Nathan are going to the BYU-San Diego game tonight, so I am going to stay home and try to catch up on all of my scrapbooking for the family book. I printed about 215 pictures out on Monday and I am happy to say I already did about 75?? of them so I am making progress but it still kills me to know I have so much to do!

my birthday!

Yesterday I had a great birthday. I woke up and got a massage, then wasted the afternoon until about 4 when we dropped Easton off at Robert and Liz's and went to Outback Steakhouse. It was yummy. Here is me and my mom with the bloomin' onion. Oh it was so good and we ate the whole thing (Nathan helped too!!)

Instead of a cake I wanted Sprinkles cupcakes. I had a Red "HOT" Velvet one and a Peanut butter chocolate chip one. They were DELICIOUS! I love Sprinkles! It was a perfect day and especially great that my mom was here. What a great way to turn 25!

why? why? why????

Why is it when the ONE day that I DESPERATELY need a nap (and actually have it on my to-do list) that THIS happens:

FYI: he is laughing

Can I just die now?

It starts

Today marks day one of Nathan's busy season at work. It is supposed to only be 6 or 7 weeks long or something like that. Last year was just awful...for me at least. Nathan of course was tired and stressed with being the new guy and having a lot of responsibilities, but I was just sitting at home. No friends, new baby...you get the picture. Amazingly I pulled through, but the memory is not a good one!! :-) Today I stayed super busy up until, well, now. I am making bread because I forgot to buy some at the store today. Amazing what I can do when I have a bunch of time on my hands and no husband at home! This year I am so blessed to have a great part-time job to keep me busy, and lots of good friends that I will hopefully call to do stuff with. I am so so so bad at calling people. I always feel like I am imposing, but I love it when people call me! So hopefully I can get over that little fear. Easton is old enough where he LOVES the park and it's so easy to take him places. I'm not saying I won't have any bad days, but I know the end will come quickly! Things are looking up!!