you just make these kinds of faces/noises with this kid. 

it just happens.

Conversations with a 2 month old from tara demars on Vimeo.

Isn't he looking into your soul?

This face, I am the luckiest person alive, to get to look at this face all day...

he is so magical, i wish i could bottle him up and hand him out to solve world problems and stuff. 

also, my boobies are on the internet. can i say boobies on here?

well i already did. you see, nat the fat rat challenged us nursing mamas to 

nurse free. 

and i did. well, i'll be honest, because of this rain, we didn't get out much, so the only public appearance i got was in the nursing room at church on sunday. but it was oh-so-nice to not wear that nursing cover (which i love cause it's so cute and my awesome bro-in-law made it for me) and to get to see my boy's face.  

i also nursed in front of people without it. namely some friends who came over and one of my visiting teachees... 

it's much better to go free, to give my baby what he needs and wants when he needs and wants, and not have to duck into a bathroom, or a basement, or cover him up with a blanket so he gets heat rash and just plain doesn't eat/like it.

i encourage all y'all who are nursing to try it. it's liberating to (discreetly) nurse free! you don't even have to show everyone your girls, but you just wait and see how much better it is!

wanna see the post that is my internet debut?

well ok then.

Easter/Damon Weekend...

We had a fun eventful weekend- it was our friend Michelle's and Damon's birthdays Saturday, and then Easter, so we spend the whole dang thing playing and partying!

Friday night we went to Michelle's birthday dinner and had great food and lots of fun with our friends, we love birthday parties!  Best part?  All the adults down in the basement eating/talking, and down comes one of the 3 little girls there with one of Michelle's gifts- opened!  The 3 little sneaks were found up in the living room, each opening one of Michelle's presents...

Saturday, yours truly made my babe breakfast in bed- cornbread? Yeah, that's what he wanted. So mama made. Cornbread and strawberries and whipped cream (by hand, not from the store!) and maple syrup that I had from back in the days where I used to do the master cleanse and not appreciate the rockin' body that I already had and now just look longingly back on.... Anyways, there was that, and then we decided to go to the most ghetto-est mall in Des Moines, called Southridge. or Southtown. I don't know. Basically it's this poor sad mall where all the real stores except VS and B&BW and Sears have moved out of.  But there happens to be a church. And a thrift store. And a store with gas station food (incidentally, my kinda store!) and an Animal Rescue League, and also a Reptile Rescue (which. was. AWESOME and I almost adopted a king snake but didn't on account of Damon wouldn't let me.) and some weird kinda middle eastern store.  And about a bazillion mall walkers and a carrousel.  Magical, right?  After that we jetted over to Des Moine's own Tasty Taco and enjoyed, wondered at, their interesting take on the flour taco.  And then we hit up the salvation army where we found like 19 pairs of little wheels that you can attach to any pair of shoes and have yourselves a grand time.

We came home and had some cooking disasters in which we forgot that cookie dough expands and then starts fires and also the holes fell out of our cookies.

On Easter Sunday, we all got dressed and tried to take a family picture... didn't work to well. We had church, which was great, the talks were awesome!  And then we came home and made a ton of mashed potatoes for our dinner with friends.  And attempted some more pictures. We aren't great at pictures, as you can see.

His Sacred Name - An Easter Declaration

The Sink Bath

and the aftermath...

Friday 5 pm

Here's what it looked like at our place at 5 pm Friday...

mama needed her a dr. pepper. 

 Damon's new morning study area, and the root beer for our home made pizza

Damon's face when he gets home...

guess who didn't do any dishes. and had macaroni for lunch...

for real, we fill a trash can a day. we need a bigger one. ice cream maker still out, 5 days later...

baby taking a nap arched into his favorite weird contortion. 

he heard us talking about him...

happy samsung.

exciting stuff huh? apparently i do a whole not of not-housework all day long... mostly i just do this:

there you have it.

so.

i have this suuuuuuuuuuper funnycute picture of ellis falling face first over the front of the boppy. but this here blog just told me i'm out of picture space. for real? that happens?  apparently now i have to "buy" internet space.

like it's limited or running low or something.

so.

there you go. i guess i'll have to buy some of that web that's floating around in the flipping air, for crying out loud. just so i can show you the funny picture.

good thing i won $5 2 nights ago by betting Damon that ... actually i don't remember what the bet was, it was something on tv... i think it might have been something from Pawn Stars, since we are obsessed with that show and i want Ellis' nickname/ our one day future dog's name to be Chumlee. anyways. i won $5. we like to bet each other money since we are super poor and we have it to throw around. as if i don't just spend money when i feel so inclined.



i'm trying to stop though.

back to the picture. i'll be buying some space on the internet machine and putting it up in a while. i have to think about this though.

really.

9:15 pm what???

sometimes you're coming home from a walk to the grocery store with your deli meats and your jones sodas and you happen upon a lovely scene, something like this:

and your heart goes 'pitter patter pitter patter i NEED THAT!"

and an hour or so later, you convince your husband to go back and get it for you (aka you drive the car with the dresser half in the drunk half out, while he walks behind the car holding the back end of the dresser, through the apartment complex, home) and your irish neighbor to help him carry it up and then you go to home depot and get all your stuffs with happy visions of 

in your head... or something like it... or any entertainment center type thing in general, to get rid of this yucko-ness...

so even though some huge storm is supposed to come in and it's dark and there are bugs everywhere and landing in the paint, you want it done tonight!  here it is taken apart, kinda can get an idea of how it looked. like crap.

and here it is all done. i may take the top 2 drawers out and just have them be open shelves for the dvd player and maybe movies, but i haven't decided yet... still better than before. and for a total cost of $7 after paint and a foam brush, it was worth it.

(sorry for the crappy pictures, i took them on the computer cause i'm lazy.)

we had some peeps over tonight and made strawberry gelato and key lime ice cream, yum! here are a couple of pics...

damon and his frans and their babiez

ellis and his girlfriend to the left share the same bday. and ellis' gf to the right is 4 months older than him. wonder which one he'll pick...

Damon and Ellis hanging out

isn't he so cute? we think so...

Conference 4/11

Did you have a favorite conference talk? I had 2.  Here's one of them:

Elder Bednar's "The Spirit of Revelation"

I especially liked this part:

"I have talked with many individuals who question the strength of their personal testimony and underestimate their spiritual capacity because they do not receive frequent, miraculous, or strong impressions. Perhaps as we consider the experiences of Joseph in the Sacred Grove, of Saul on the road to Damascus, and of Alma the Younger, we come to believe something is wrong with or lacking in us if we fall short in our lives of these well-known and spiritually striking examples. If you have had similar thoughts or doubts, please know that you are quite normal. Just keep pressing forward obediently and with faith in the Savior. As you do so, you “cannot go amiss” (D&C 80:3)."

we are Famiy.

here are some pictures Kristi took of us 3 in our orchard. yes, ours. funniest moment of the whole thing, when we first got to the orchard and were looking for a good 'aisle' and damon pointed out the deer down near the end. kristi goes, 'oh, those are deer? i thought they were tree stumps!' and then when damon was like, 'for reals?', she was all, 'i couldn't see them, ok?  i have astigmatism!!!'. and it was funny. maybe you had to be there...

we didn't plan this whole thing very well- like, we didn't bring any clothes for pictures. Ellis had nothing super cute/non animal covered to wear, i luckily did plenty of shopping while in utah and had a shirt and jeans that almost fit better (except see how baggy they are under my knees? how disappointing)and could borrow a cardigan from Kristi. and also luckily, Damon and Morgan are like the same size: lanky. so Damon wore Morgan's shirt.  and black church shoes. haha. oh well, can't have it all.  next time we'll do better.

ellis was not very happy at the time. and doesn't damon look like such a manly mountain man??? like he's gonna go all ax on us and start chopping down those apple trees.