APRICOTS!!!

My parents & Kae came over last night and picked 5 buckets of apricots. I'm so excited!! I'm going to process our share tonight. I'm going to can them all this go around. We'll be picking more on Saturday (assuming some more are ripe by then). This will be my first try at canning, and I will admit that I am nervous. My mom gave me all the instructions, and it doesn't seem TOO complicated, but everything always sounds easy until you actually have to do it by yourself. It's like "Minute to Win It". I love that show!! All of the challenges look so easy and you think, "Man, I could totally do that!!". But, as I realized at our last Mary Kay Big Quarterly Event, I am not very good at the challenges. Out of the 12 that I tried, I could only do 3. It was a very humbling experience. :) Anyway, not much else is going on at the moment. I've got 3 Mary Kay parties scheduled in the next week and I'm excited for that. Matt made more apricot ice cream on Tuesday. It was really yummy. He not only put blended apricots in, but he also chopped up some apricots so the ice cream would have apricot chunks in it too. Delicious!! We finished the rest of it last night, so I'm sure I'll be making more tonight. Love it!!!

Isabelle got a box of books yesterday from Grandma Hunter and she was so excited. I took some video of her taking them all out of the box and she was reading all of them. So cute!! She got excited when she could identify some of the pictures in the books. She must have spent at least an hour just reading and re-reading them. Maybe I'll post some of the video if I can figure out how to do that. :)

I suppose that's all of the excitement for now. Have a great day!! Oh, and don't forget that my birthday's next Thursday. :)

This is the lovely ice cream maker we have, given to me by Matt's mom for my birthday YEARS ago. I don't even remember when, that's how long ago it was. :) I love it. Anyone who knows me knows that I love ice cream, so this was the perfect present.

I made the apricot ice cream last night and it was SO YUMMY!! Luckily I still have enough sugar soaked apricots to make at least 2 more batches. My parents & Lora came over and we ate it ALL. It was so good. So tonight I'm definitely going to make more. I think we need to invest in another thingy that you freeze for the ice cream maker so we can make more than one batch at a time. As it is now, we can make one batch, then we have to empty it and refreeze the bowl thingy before we can make another batch. Oh well, I guess that keeps us from eating too much ice cream all at once. :)

THE WEEKEND

So this weekend wasn't too exciting, but that's ok. On Saturday we had a yard sale at my parents' house. We got rid of a lot of stuff and we made about $130.00, so that was GREAT!! I made a Mary Kay delivery then went to work for a few hours. Saturday night we didn't do much. We went to Blockbuster and got a few movies. I watched "Precious" while Matt was working out in the garden. I didn't like it at all. It was just depressing. Do people like to be depressed? I often wonder about that because all of the movies that get such high praise from everyone are usually the most horribly depressing stories ever. Like the book "The Glass Castle"....everyone praises that book like it's the best book ever written. I finally read it a couple of months ago and I hated it. Way too depressing. People say these stories are inspiring, but I don't know. They're 95% depressing and 5% uplifting, in my opinion. Anyway, maybe people do like feeling depressed, but I don't get it. :) To each their own, I guess. Sunday was pretty uneventful as well. We did pick some apricots in the evening though, then my parents came over and picked a bunch more. I got them all cleaned and halved and froze a bunch of them. The others I am going to make some homemade ice cream with tonight. I'm excited about that, it should be really yummy. :) I love homemade ice cream, it's the best!!

Isabelle has been obsessed with this ladybug book that Matt's mom sent to her a little while ago. We have to read it to her about 10 to 20 times a day. It's the cutest book. Every page you turn gets rid of one of the little lady bugs. She is starting to learn her numbers with this book. There's a number in the corner of every page for how many ladybugs are on that page. As soon as you turn the page she points to the number and says a number. She's usually right. :) I'm so glad that she loves to read, because so do I.

Anyway, I guess that's it for now. Have a great day, everyone!! Oh, and don't forget that my birthday is next Thursday. :D

ANDY AND ISABELLE

Here's a short post about my brother-in-law who lives with us. His name is Andrew and he's the best. He's always excited to see Isabelle when he gets home and he's always willing to take her on a walk when she's having a meltdown. My favorite thing is all of the scientific things he tries to teach her. When I walked out the door this morning there was a drawing of a circle with the radius drawn in (they like to draw on the porch with Isabelle's sidewalk chalk). I'm sure he was explaining the whole thing to her. It makes me smile when he does these things, it usually happens when he sees something on TV and then he'll explain the whole thing to her in adult terms and she'll just look at him like he's crazy. Ha ha! It's cute.

Not much happened last night. I made tortelloni soup with garlic bread and Matt made a salad. We watched a little TV and then I started sorting through things for the yard sale on Saturday. Tonight I've got my Mary Kay unit meeting and then it will be more sorting. Fun, fun, fun!! :) Have a great night, everyone!!

Wow, a new post twice in one week!! What's the world coming to??? Ha ha!! Well, we tried picking some apricots last night. Apparently they were not as ripe as I thought. :( We still got a couple of bowl fulls though, and they were DEEEEElicious!! It also gave us a chance to hang out. My sisters & my parents came over and we roasted some hot dogs and marshmallows in the fire pit Matt made a few weeks ago in our back yard. Fun was had by all. Amber bought some bubbles, water balloons and water guns for the kids. Isabelle had so much fun with them. I'm pretty sure she just dumped out the bubbles. Ha ha! As for the water balloons it took her a few tries to throw it hard enough to break it. Then she just squished one in between her hands and it got water all over her. She didn't seem to mind. The funniest thing was when she had the water gun. She saw Jordan & Tyler shooting people with theirs so she would go up to people and touch them with her gun and they'd have to pretend she was shooting them with the water. She thought it was sooooo funny. So cute! She was pretty worn out by the time everyone went home so she was happy to get her bath & get to bed.

As for me I've been staying up late reading. I started reading The Hunger Games last week and finished it in a few days. Now I am on to the 2nd book of that series, Catching Fire. I really really like the series so far. There's a 3rd book coming out sometime this year. Hopefully it's soon, I'll have to check on that, because I'm sure I'll be finishing this 2nd book in a couple of days as well. Other than that, Matt and I have been working hard getting our house clean. We finally broke down and made up a chore chart, it just wasn't getting done otherwise. Things are starting to get under control in that department, so that's good. I'm going to start sorting through our storage stuff for a yard sale at my parents' house this Saturday. It's always good to get things sorted through & organized, plus to get rid of things that are no longer needed. Matt always makes fun of me for watching "Hoarders" and "Clean House", but it really helps me to get rid of things that I clearly don't need but am hanging on to for some strange reason. Anyway, I suppose that's all the news for now. Have a lovely day!!

Oh, one more thing. I have decided that I'm going to plant some of these in our yard sometime. They're blooming everywhere now and I just love them. :)

Ok, so once again it's been a while. I really need to get better about keeping my blog updated, but I always think it would be more interesting with pictures so I wait, thinking we'll get a new cable for our camera. I think I just need to accept the fact that it isn't going to happen anytime soon and just move on. :)



Anyway, so let's see, what all has happened in the last few months? Well, Matt lost his job on March 31st, but didn't tell me until April 1st, so at first I thought it was some cruel April Fool's joke. Of course it wasn't, and moments of panic followed, but then I was ok. They gave us a decent severance package so I knew we would be ok for a little while at least. Luckily one of Matt's friends recommended him for a job at Silverline Security a few weeks later. Matt interviewed with the owners of the company and was hired the next day. So all in all, Matt was only out of work for one month, which gave him the chance to get some things done around the house that he hadn't had time for before. So everything worked out perfectly as far as Matt's employment was concerned, so then we just had to figure out what to do with Isabelle during the day while we were both working. My little sister Lora had been watching her for about 20 hours a week and luckily she was willing to watch her for 40 hours a week. We were very lucky that Lora is so helpful. Without her I really don't know what we would do, I can't stand the thought of putting Isabelle in daycare with someone we don't know. Plus Isabelle just adores Lora. They have so much fun together and sometimes the only way I can get Isabelle out of bed in the morning is to tell her that we're going to see Lora. Then she gets all excited and jumps out of bed. :) So, back to Matt's job. He works in North Salt Lake now and was hired to be the director of customer service. They had very specific objectives and goals for his position and he exceeded all of their expectations. Now that he has their customer service department completely under control and running smoothly they have moved him to the position of compliance officer. I hope he likes that position as well as his last one. :) I guess we'll find out in the next couple of weeks. Oh, and their company sells home security systems, they don't do mall security or anything like that. So many people assumed that since Matt likes guns so much that he must be working a security position at some business somewhere, carrying a gun and flashlight around. :)



On to other news. I decided a few weeks ago that since Matt works in Salt Lake now and doesn't get home until around 7:00 at night that I would start doing the cooking around the house so that we can still eat at a decent hour. I'm sure Matt was very scared at the idea, but to his credit he seemed very supportive of the idea. Now those of you that know me well, know that I DO NOT cook. I can bake and make desserts, but cooking....not so much. The first day was horrible, I burned the poor pork chops, but Matt still ate them. They weren't so bad once you got past the blackened outer crust. Ha ha!! The next day was a million times better, I made a whole asian feast. It was really yummy. I made miso soup, fried wontons stuffed with pork and other good things, beef stir fry and rice. Since then it's been up & down. You never know what you're gonna get. :) Some things will take some practice and time, but all in all, it's all edible and not so bad.



Let's see..what else? In June my mom persuaded me to enter Isabelle into the Freedom Festival baby contest. So we took her over on a Saturday afternoon to be judged, which consists of putting your baby on a table while a judge tries to play with them. Weird, I know, but whatever. Anyway, Isabelle instantly picked up two of the stuffed animals they had sitting there and was watching the judge talking to her and smiling. I told Isabelle to kiss one of the animals and she did, then she started giggling like crazy because she thought it was so funny. When Isabelle thinks something is silly she covers her mouth when she giggles, it's the cutest thing. So that's what she did, and of course the judge thought it was hilarious. Needless to say Isabelle won first place in her age division, which meant she got to be in the two Freedom Festival parades. The next weekend was the Children's Parade. It went ok. We weren't as prepared as we could have been. The week seemed to fly by, so I didn't get the wagon decorated like I wanted and we were running around all crazy in the 20 minutes between when I got home from my training run and when we had to leave for the parade. Isabelle was ok during the parade. She didn't love it, and seemed to get bored after a couple of blocks, but since it was only about 6 blocks we survived. We then knew we had to be a lot more prepared for the longer parade the next week. It was still fun though. My parents made little signs that had her name on it, so people would yell her name and she'd look at them and smile.



My sister Jana came that next week to visit on her way home from their vacation in California. It was fun having them around. We had our "Driveway of Fire" on Friday night. Matt added a new element this year....hand sanitizer. It was awesome. You light it on fire and it makes a pretty blue flame. :) Milo & Kae were lighting the fireworks this year, as always, and they made good use of the hand sanitizer. Everything was going well until one of their "boxes of doom" got out of control and fireworks started flying everywhere. Poor little Isabelle got hit with one right in the chest. She wasn't hurt, but she was really scared so we had to take her home soon after that, which was just as well since it was her bedtime anyway.



The next morning I got up bright & early to go to the Balloon Fest. I let Matt & Isabelle sleep in so I went by myself. It was pretty windy when I got there so they hadn't launched any balloons yet. They started blowing up a huge Coke bottle balloon right after I arrived and they were talking about how it was the biggest one of its kind. It was 178 feet tall. As soon as they stood it up the wind got a hold of it and it instantly slammed to the ground amid screams of the people below it. Of course people aren't going to get hurt from a falling balloon, they were just more surprised than anything. As soon as it hit it started bouncing back in my direction, but luckily the people holding the ropes stopped it before it hit the ground on my side. It was all very entertaining. Soon after that they deflated the big Coke bottle and explained it was just there for display since there aren't enough places big enough for it to land in Provo/Orem. Well, after an hour and a half of waiting for the winds to die down they finally launched 3 balloons, but then the wind picked back up and they cancelled any more launches. So I went home a little disappointed since I knew I wouldn't be able to watch the balloons on Monday since we would be getting Isabelle ready for the parade.

This is Isabelle before the parade. Note all the drinks & snacks in the front of the wagon. :)

On Monday morning, the day of the parade, everything went relatively smoothly. We woke up in plenty of time to get ready and to get Isabelle ready. We left a little later than we planned, but got to the parade start in plenty of time. Lora fixed Isabelle's hair when we got to the parade start and then we were ready to go. I had spent Sunday night decorating Amber's wagon that we used for the parade and it looked really cute. Lora helped me make some really cute signs to put on the side of the wagon. Kae helped me tape the streamers all over the wagon and then Matt made some really cute wheel covers and put flags in the front of the wagon. Once the parade started the rest is kind of a blur. My parents were at the beginning of the parade route, in our usual spot, and we saw a few other people we knew along the way. Other than that, we were just trying to keep up with everyone. They were going at a really fast pace for some reason. I almost had to run a few times. Isabelle seemed to enjoy herself. We made sure she had a lot of snacks and drinks, so she was fine. She'd wave and smile at people that called her name and we got a lot of people saying, "She's just the cutest thing I've ever seen." It was fun. We got a little hot towards the end, but all in all it wasn't so bad. The parade route was about 2 miles and then we walked back about another mile before Kae picked up Matt and took him back to our car. I then made it almost all the way back to the beginning of the parade before Matt finally was able to get the car through the traffic to pick us up. Isabelle was exhausted after the parade. It was funny, as soon as we were off the parade route it was like she knew she was done smiling & waving and instantly laid down in the wagon to rest. It was so cute!

Here's Isabelle after the parade, happy to be in the nice cool car.

After the parade we rested at home. Isabelle and Matt took a long nap while I made a strawberry tart and a strawberry cake/pie for our family BBQ. We had the BBQ at my parents' house and it was yummy, as usual. After dinner we had a badminton tournament which was a ton of fun. My mom and I were a team, and we didn't win, but that's ok. Matt & Kae were a team, and they ended up in the championship game against Ken & Lora. I think Ken & Lora ended up winning, but I don't remember. :)



Well, that was our lovely 4th of July weekend. In between all of the fun of the last few weeks we always made time to watch the World Cup games. It was sad when the US lost to Ghana, but they did well and we're still proud of them. Maybe next time we'll make it to the finals. :) Take care everyone, and have a great week!!

A VERY SHORT POST

Well, there's lots to discuss, but no time. So here for your viewing pleasure, my new favorite show. HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER!! It's so funny!! Kae made me start watching it and I am so glad that she owns all 4 seasons because once I started, I couldn't get enough. Barney is the best!!

I am in a baking mood today. Tonight after my book club I am either going to make one or both of these:

Yum!! I got both recipes off of the internet today, and they just look so yummy!! I may not be a great cook, but BOY can I bake!! :)

Have a great day!!

New pictures of Isabelle!!!

Here are some pictures Lora took of Isabelle a couple of days before her birthday. So cute!!! Hopefully I'll be able to post some pictures from her birthday party soon. It was so much fun. She liked all of her presents, loved her cake, and even blew out her candle. She is so precious!! Her 1 year check-up went really well. She is still in the 95th percentile for her height. She's going to be a tall one!! :) She didn't like the shots, but what baby does??? She is saying more and more words every day. She likes to copy what you say. It is so cute! Her new thing is to say, "Hi, how are you?" to Matt every morning. She loves to walk around pretending she's on the phone. She'll say, "Hello. How are you?" then she'll laugh and then start jibber-jabbing away, with a few pauses for laughter here and there. It's so funny. She also likes to drop things and say, "uh-oh!" When she's really sad or mad she'll say, "OH NO!!!"

As for me and Matt's Wendoversary, it was soooo much fun!! We stayed at Montego Bay in one of their jacuzzi suites. Very, very nice. We had a lot of fun heading out on the town and then relaxing in our jacuzzi. It was nice to get away from everything and spend some quiet time together. Plus we came home with a little more money in our pockets, which is always nice. :)

Well, I hope you are all having a great February so far. Six more weeks of winter, according to the ground hog. Hopefully we get more snow here so we don't have a drought this summer. I can't wait for the Superbowl this Sunday......Goooooo Colts!!! Goooooo Collie!!! I'm so excited!!! Have a great day!!

A SHORT UPDATE

Well, it's been forever, as usual, but I just wanted to say hello to anyone who may ever look at my page. :) HELLO!! Our little family is doing well. I was glad to get Christmas cards out this year, that felt like a huge accomplishment. Tomorrow is our 5 year anniversary. I can't believe we've only been married for 5 years. Maybe it just feels like longer since we've been together for almost 12 years. :) I love Matt so much and I'm so excited for our Wendoversary!! We're heading out to Wendover next Monday to have some fun & get some alone time. My wonderful sister Lora is watching Isabelle while we're gone. I'm so glad that she is always so willing to watch Isabelle, it helps out sooo much! Isabelle's birthday is next Wednesday. I can't believe she's a year old already. Where has the time gone??? She has been walking since she was 8 1/2 months, so now she runs around like crazy. It's funny, sometimes she'll just walk circles around you when you're sitting on the ground. She is saying a lot more words now. She can say teeth, more, daddy, mama, that, hey, yay, and I'm sure I'm forgetting many more. She is so much fun. She is always getting into something, mostly food items. :) If you don't watch her for a couple of minutes she'll be covered in something edible, usually chocolate. I'll post some pictures we have of that sometime. :) They're cute. Well, that's the short update for now. I'm going to look hard tonight for our camera cable. If I can't find it tonight then I'll just give in and buy a new one. :( Have a lovely day, everybody!!