Update

I have much more detail I could add as well as pics, but no time! So here's a quick recap:

We got home yesterday from Star Valley. We had a scary moment on the way back when I was driving, changed lanes and hit slush that made our car start to fish tail. After a minute of that our car did a 180 and we ended up facing oncoming traffic on the shoulder of the road. The good thing is that no one got hurt, and we didn't hit anything. It scared me half to death, to say the least!

Emily is officially married! Wahoo! It was a great day. She and Zack looked so happy and beautiful and the weather even cooperated.

We just finished packing and we head to Tucson in the morning. Hopefully we don't forget anything! More to come....

Merry Christmas!

I just wanted to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas! We are heading up to the bitter cold tomorrow for a few days, then back for Emily's big day, then to the warm for vacation! It's a rough time for us, but I'm sure we'll make it :) Merry Christmas!

Christmas Projects

As some of you may have guessed, I have been working on a few things lately.

We'll start here. This is a finished quilt top that will eventually be a lap quilt to go on the couch, if/when I ever get it done! It worked up pretty quickly and now I have to quilt it, which I'll do on my machine hopefully soon.


Here's kind of a close up. After seeing this picture, you may think I'm going to get a new camera for Christmas, but probably not!


A week ago I went with my SIL to a stampin up thing. I had never been and wanted to check it out. Here are a few cards I made.

I'm also working on a stocking for Molly that I hoped to have done for Christmas, but I highly doubt that at this point! Oh well. I was also planning on making stockings for Justin and me as well, so I guess next year I'll have all 3 done.

I hope everyone is enjoying this time of year! I sure am!

Going Green

I bought some bananas tonight at Target and they were literally this green! Not just some, but ALL of the bananas they had were this green! I don't think I've seen greener bananas in one store at one time.

In all honestly, I like my bananas slighty green. Not this green, but about half yellow, half green. But that's just me. How do you like yours?

Good news

The best news on the list right now for us is that the LSAT IS OVER!! Justin took the LSAT Saturday, so we can officially say he will NEVER take it again! No matter what the score. We don't find out his score for three weeks. He has most of his applications ready, minus a few things. Once he gets his score he will finish everything up and have it all sent out. Mostly he's applying to the same schools, but depending on his score, he may change a few things. We'll see. We hope we have more good news in the future regarding law schools! We're looking for a yes!

In other good news, I won a giveaway on the D Goddess blog last week! I'm so excited! Check out her link on my sidebar. She is still doing giveaways for some really cute things!

Here's what I won-some cute Christmas gift tags to go on gifts. I got to choose 4 sets from Paper Treats, a gal's etsy site. Even cooler, Paper Treats is going to be on Martha Stewart's show tomorrow! How cool for her. I would show you a pic of some of her things, but she's closed her shop until after this week with her big event being tomorrow. But once I get them I will post them. They are so adorable!

That's all for now. We are getting snow as we speak! It's the first snowfall practically this winter, so I know that many people can't wait to get out on the slopes! Me being one of them, but who knows if I'll actually make it this year!

Dear Grandma and Grandpa P,

I have been walking now for about two weeks! Since you haven't seen me do it in real life yet, we decided to record me today. Take a look! For about the first minute I am playing on the floor, then I get up and walk. See you soon!

Love, Molly

Story

Molly has had a bad diaper rash recently. I was talking to Becky, my SIL, and she was offering some tips.

So the other night we decided to try a few of the things she suggested. One of the problems with a diaper rash is that their poor little bums are always in a diaper, so we were airing her out after her bath.

She was playing and Justin was on the computer. Justin heard her kind of grunt, but he didn't see anything. The next second he looked over and she had pooped on the carpet! We were both dying laughing, we thought it was so funny. Molly just kind of looked at it, unsure what it was. Luckily it was easily cleaned up (it was all in one piece) and done with.

We haven't tried the airing out since :) But her bum does look better.

I filled up for $22.50!

Can you believe gas prices lately? It's really unbelievable I think. I've seen the low prices and just filled up (I guess Justin has been doing it lately) and I couldn't believe how cheap it was! Man, it feels good. With all the other crap going on in the world and our country, at least this has finally gone the way we wanted it to!

And now I'm curious who has seen Twilight the movie. What do you think about it? I saw it Saturday afternoon and I'm still not quite sure what to think. I liked it, but that's about as much as I can say. I read a critic about it before I went and in hindsight I wish I hadn't. Not that I necessarily agree with what was said, but it made me notice how "fwoopy," yes, that's the word that was used, Edward's hair was and little things like that.

Swap

This was my first ever fabric swap, organized by chickpea sewing studio (see my sidebar for her link). It was really fun! You had to send 25 5 by 5 inch squares. After she received all the fabric, she mixed it all up and sent it back to everyone. All for free! I sent my fabric probably a month ago (?) and I just got my fabric yesterday.

It came in this little bundle.

Here's all the fabric I got! I think I actually got some pretty cute stuff. It looks pretty springy to me, so I'll probably do something along those lines, although I'm not sure yet (plus I have other projects in line before this...). I'm planning on using white fabric with these squares.

Here's a close up. Some of the fabrics are definitely cuter than others, but it was fun getting my little package and seeing the assortment inside!

Another couple of side notes. No jury duty yet. Justin hates his job and just applied for a new one today. And we found lamby!! Ha ha! My mom thinks it should be a cat because apparently it has 9 lives! We found it at the neighbors. I had raked their leaves last week and Molly must have dropped it.

New Jobs

Justin and I have new jobs! This past Saturday was Justin's last day at Dillards. He started today at a cell phone company where he'll sell Verizon phones. If you need a new phone or an upgrade, let him know! Hopefully he'll enjoy the job a bit better and the commission will be a good thing!

I am a cleaning lady now! :) I took flyers around my neighborhood and I've had several calls already of homes to come and clean. I thought it would be something somewhat easy that I could do and I figured everyone in the area knows me, so they would be willing to have me come over and help.

I've also been summoned to jury duty this week. You may remember me saying about a year ago that they asked me to do that. I said I had a new baby I was nursing, so I didn't have to then. Well, they remembered and now I have no excuse! I would love to not have to go in, but we'll see. I get to call every day and ask. Today numbers 1-50 had to go in. I am 212, so I'm hoping if I do go in, it won't be until Friday. We'll see. I'll definitely let you know if I go in and how the experience went.

I feel like maybe I jinxed us. We found Molly's lamb and now it's gone again. :( This time I have no clue where it is. Maybe it will show up, but maybe not. At least she has plenty of other stuffed animals left!

This past Saturday I saw Seussical the musical at my high school alma mater (sp?). It was pretty cute. I had never seen it before and actually I haven't read all the books that the musical includes, but they did a good job. Definitely not my favorite musical, but it was entertaining.

First Steps!

Today Molly took five steps all on her own! It was pretty exciting. It was me and Todd, so at least I have a witness!

I was sitting on the couch and she was by me, so I held her hands to see if she'd stand without holding onto anything (she's done this before several times, for about a whole minute just a day or two ago). She stayed balanced and Todd was encouraging her to come to him and she did! She took five steps, then fell onto her horse. Justin was bummed that he missed it, but you just never know when it will happen!

New Words

Here are some recent additions to Molly's vocabulary:

Uh oh! She loves to try to say this.
Woo-woo. This is what she says when she sees a dog either in real life or in a book. (Woo woo! Woo woo! Woo woo!) That's how it usually sounds.
Oooooh! This is what she says when she's fascinated with something.

Other than that, she talks a lot, but we have no clue what she's saying!

Beloved Lamb

Today while at Target, we lost Molly's lamb stuffed animal! This is her all time favorite stuffed animal--the one she holds in her hand while crawling and holds as she sleeps. I realized it after we checked out, so we circled back around the store in the places we had been, but I didn't see it. So I stopped at Guest Services and asked if they had found it. The lady looked and no one had turned it in. So I left my name and number hoping they'd find it and call.

A few hours later I got a call and they found it! Hooray! I was so sad we had lost it! Luckily no one wanted to claim it as their own. I brught it home to Molly and pulled it out of my bag and she quickly reached for it, then held it right up to her face! She loves her lamby!

Halloween Night

The primary had a little party before they went trick or treating. My mom is in the primary, so she was going to the party and I thought Molly would enjoy it, so we tagged along. (And Molly actually goes to the nursery already, even though she isn't 18 months! The benefits of having a teeny, tiny primary!)

Here's Molly and her friend Lindsay listening to stories and waiting for music time. Little kids are so good with babies! Well, sometimes I guess!
Molly loved watching everybody. I was feeding her chicken nuggets here and she was sitting in my lap, not moving, just looking at everybody. This never happens! She's usually so wiggly!

Here are some of the leaders helping with singing time.

These kids were singing a song they learned in school that they were teaching everyone. It was really cute!

We took Molly trick or treating to a few houses in the neighborhood and she loved it! Her favorite part was reaching into the baskets and picking out a piece of candy. She seemed to love crunch bars if they were available! It must have been the blue paper.

Here she is with some of her spoils.

Justin's family came into town on Friday night for a baby blessing on Sunday. They stopped by that night to see Molly in her costume.

Left to right: me, Sunny, Kyle, Val and Molly, Shelley and Mark.

On Sunday little Laney was blessed. I forgot my camera, so sorry, no pics, but she looked beautiful! She is such a precious baby and it was fun to see all of the family. Sunny and Kyle live in Boise, so it's not very often that we get to see them.

Happy Halloween!

Trick or Treat! Here's a preview of Molly's costume. She's our little punkin! I think we'll take her around to a few houses in the neighborhood and call it good.
Festive Halloween cookies!
I had these black and orange sprinkles I bought a couple of years ago that I never used, so yesterday I finally decided to make something. I looked up a cookie recipe with sprinkles on allrecipes.com and found this one. They were really good!


Chocolate Chip Sprinkle Cookies

INGREDIENTS
2 cups butter, softened
1 cup sugar
1 cup packed brown sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup quick-cooking oats
1/2 cup crisp rice cereal
1/2 cup colored candy sprinkles
1/2 cup chopped pecans

DIRECTIONS
In a mixing bowl, cream butter and sugars. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in vanilla. Combine the flour, baking soda and salt; gradually add to creamed mixture. Stir in remaining ingredients. Drop by rounded tablespoonfuls 2 in. apart onto greased baking sheets. Bake at 375 degrees F for 8-10 minutes or until lightly browned. Remove to wire racks to cool.

And here's the link if you'd rather have it: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Chocolate-Chip-Sprinkle-Cookies/Detail.aspx
They were really easy and very yummy! I left the pecans out and forgot the oats, but they were still great!

Happy Halloween!

Grandpa time

In the course of a week I was able to see both of my grandfathers. This isn't terribly out of the ordinary, seeing as we all live in the same state and near proximity, but they are 93 and 92 years old and both live in retirement homes.

Last Thursday I went with my mom and Molly down to see her dad in Orem. We took him to his favorite place for lunch-Chucky's aka Chuck a Rama! He loves that place! After we went back to his place and decorated his door for Halloween. It sounds like they are having a door decorating contest. It looks very festive now! And I think he liked it. He is doing well. His memory isn't quite as great as in the past, but he is still walking pretty well (with his walker) and remembers most things.

Sunday for dinner, we invited Grandpa Galbraith over. He lives about 15-20 minutes away, so we invite him over quite often. He is in fantastic shape! After dinner we were talking and discussed his grandmother who was born in Sweden. He knew the name of the city, but wasn't quite sure how to spell it. We decided it would be fun for him to have a little lesson on computers and the internet. We looked up the city, found it, and then proceeded to the city's website. It is a beautiful city! There are waterfalls and a lock system that has been developed there. They shoot many motion pictures there as well. We watched a movie about the city and he was really impressed! He was blown away by the information we have at our fingertips! It was a really fun experience! I love my grandpas!

Finito! My latest projects...

Here are my latest projects that I thought I'd share.

I saw this countdown calendar last year on my cousin Erin and her sister Emily's blogs. I thought they were so cute so I printed out the instructions and started working on it. Then Christmas came and I wasn't even close to done, so I decided to wait til this year to finish it up. I recently pulled it back out and decided to get it done so I wouldn't remember last minute. If I had a good camera, it would only take one pic to see it, but I took a few and hopefully you get an idea of what it looks like. This pic turned out a bit yellow-y.
And the flash on this one is obviously messed up, but you can see that it really is more white here.

Here's a close up of some of the numbers. These are favor tins that will be filled with candy. The little tins are velcroed on. The original idea came from a Stampin Up lady I believe.

Next--my brother Ryan had a whole bunch of swatches from his work that he no longer needed, so Becky and I raided them one day and I got several including these:

With these I decided to make this:

I actually got the idea from the most adorable little coat that Heather Bailey (a fabric designer) made for her daughter. Hers is way cuter, but hey, for making up the pattern myself, I am pretty impressed with myself! ha! I just took a couple of Molly's jackets and with paper and a pencil I made up a pattern.

A close up of the buttons and the little flower.

Lastly--

Aren't these hair clips adorable? I'll tell you my secret-STICKERS! They work great for hair clips! I bought these on clearance. They have adhesive on the back, so I just put some fabric over and then glued on the little clip. Quick and cheap!

Gardiner Village

I'm a little late on blogging lately, so here's what we did last weekend. We headed to Gardiner Village for the little witches weekend. Man, it was crazy! We went on Saturday afternoon and there were so many people there. But it was still fun. It was just the girls and the kids. Most of the men in the family were in North Carolina for furniture market (minus Justin and Todd) so we thought it would be fun to check out all of the witches.

The main thing we did was check out the petting zoo. I would take Molly's hand and pet the animal, but then she would shake and get scared! But Major on the other hand was LOVING it! It was so cute. He was running everywhere checking everything out. Lexie was a bit unsure and Mitt liked it too.

Me, Molly and Mitt

Becky, Shay, Emily, Lexie, me and Molly. I think Natalie was getting Mitt in line for the pony rides so she wasn't in the picture. And my mom came as well. It was fun, even with all the crowds.

Toddler food

We are in the delightul period of time where Molly refuses to eat her mashed baby food (ie 1st, 2nd and 3rd foods by gerber) and only wants to eat what we eat and ice cream! So I've talked to a few people about this and have applied their advice.

Today we tried the following: graduates sticks-the chicken kind. She doesn't like them. We also tried mandarin oranges. Another no. We tried lunchables with ham, cheese and the crackers. She likes them! So I guess we'll stick with those for a while and see if we can add some of the ones she didn't like and maybe she eventually will like them.

Man, it's one thing for me to decide what I feel like for dinner, but completely another to figure out what my 12 month old wants! And she will certainly not allow you to spoon feed her anymore! Oh the joys :)

Aida

Last night Justin and I went with Ryan and Brooke to see Aida at the Orem Hale Center Theater. I had never seen the musical before and honestly didn't really even know the storyline, but I loved it! The music was great, the actors were very good and it was very entertaining! My friend Sara was in it, so that was the main reason for going and we weren't disappointed. Although the stage is really small, it was amazing how they were able to use it so it didn't seem that way. And Sara, you were awesome! If you live close, you should definitely check it out. It runs for about another month.

Pumpkin Patch

We went to the pumpkin patch yesterday with my mom, Ryan and Becky and their girls. It was a really cute place and very kid/picture friendly.

They had these rows of pumpkins and then they had tractors all lined up in front.

Grandma with the kiddos

All of us minus mom. We had a really fun time.

Tag

While blogging about Molly's bday and checking out other blogs, I realized that I've been tagged. And not just once, but twice! How weird is that? I've decided to indulge you two, so here goes, one at a time.

Tag 1

THE RULES: You have to post the 4th picture in the 4th folder in your pictures folder. Then give a brief description before you tag a few others. So here it goes!

This is a pic of Molly taken on March 5th, 2008. There are so many pics of Molly that I decided to tweak the tag a bit. So to make it a bit more interesting, I changed the numbers from 4 to 3. I chose the 3rd folder, 3rd folder (we have a bunch of subfolders) and 3rd picture.

Viola! Much more interesting, right? This definitely requires a description!! This is Alan, from our cruise in 2007. We were at a karaoke contest one night that my SIL, Sunny, sang in.Tthis man also sand and won!! What's even funnier is that he was in our elevator one day after and we said, "hey, you're the guy who won karaoke! Nice job!" His response was, "oh, I was drunk that night." Ha ha. So there you go. I think that was a bit more interesting.

Moving right along

Tag 2

Crazy Eights

8 TV shows I like to watch-

1-What Not to Wear

2-Iron Chef America

3-The Office

4-American Idol

5-So You Think You Can Dance

6-Kitchen Nightmares

7-Friends

8-The News? I really don't watch that much!

8 Favorite Restaurants-

1-Olive Garden

2-Zupa's

3-Outback Steakhouse

4-Nordstrom Cafe

5-The Pizza/Pasta Factory

6-PF Chang's

7-Paradise Bakery

8-Nielsen's (ice cream)

8 things that happened yesterday-

1-helped Becky finish the binding on her quilt

2-watched 3 little girls

3-heated up leftover enchiladas

4-did laundry

5-sewed a flower to go on Molly's coat

6-ate ice cream

7-had fhe

8-gave Molly a bath

8 things I'm looking forward to-

1-Emily's wedding!

2-Law school-hopefully next fall

3-The pumpkin patch tomorrow

4-Making more projects!

5-When Molly has all her teeth and can eat everything

6-When Justin gets a raise or a better job that he actually likes! (That sounds mean and I don't mean it to be mean...but he gets paid nothing and he is having a hard time finding a better job!)

7-Taking Molly trick or treating for the first time

8-Seeing Sara in Aida this weekend!

8 things on my wish list-

1-World peace! ha ha

2-That Justin will get into a top law school (like BYU)

3- That we'll be able to make it to AZ for the Pendleton family vacation. If you have a hook up, let me know! We're going to Tucson and we don't want to drive it!

4-To live in our own house :)

5-To have a grand piano in my home one day.

6-To see Wicked one day.

7-To visit NYC since I've never been.

8-To color my hair again...I miss the blond sometimes!

Birthday Party 2

Alright, well Molly had another party this past Friday night with the Pendletons. It was a lot of fun! We had dinner, followed by presents and cake. Then we put Molly to bed and the rest of us played a couple of games including the sign game--it was pretty hilarious and really fun.

The decorated ping pong table. At first I didn't think I'd really love having the ping pong table down here, but it's the greatest thing ever! It worked here as a display table for Molly's gift and cake and it also is my craft/cutting table! The banner here says Happy Birthday and you can see that I made a similar castle cake. At least that's over with! And I think I liked the first one better...probably because I love funfetti cake over strawberry cake!

Sorry about the glare here but this was what Molly liked the most this day: the ice cream popsicles we had with her cake.

Little Laney! Isn't she adorable? She's about a month old now.

Grandma and Grandpa got this caterpillar for Molly and she absolutely loves it! It was a big, big hit.

Molly liked her first piggy bank too.

And her Cosmo the Cougar book from Scott and Brooke.

Here's the gang. Left to right: Andrea (Mark's friend), Mark, Brooke, Laney, Scott, Val and Shelley. This really isn't the best pic. I should've had everyone look, but oh well! We missed Sunny and Kyle and of course Brad (mission)!

Happy Birthday!

Happy 1st Birthday Molly! We can't believe it's already been a year! We love you so much. A few of our favorite things about Molly are: her happy personality, her fun sounds and words, her smile, and the cute way she cuddles with her stuffed animals when she goes to sleep.

We celebrated her birthday with the Galbraith clan on Sunday.

She was very excited about this horse.

And she even was somewhat interested in opening her presents.

This was quite the hit with ALL the grandkids! Once it was open and we had set it up, all the kids were trying to get on it!

We had a princess theme, so all the kids had crowns. Cute Lexie.

Mitt and Major. We had a scavenger hunt and Mitt found all the clues.

The cake. Thanks to my cousin Wendy for all of the ideas!

I think she liked it :)