As of Late

Ellis and I are enjoying some time in Texas hanging out with family and letting Damon get some real good studying in. But I realize my epic blogging comeback has fizzled and sputtered out, so I thought I'd take the time while the tyrant is down for a nap to post some stuff from our life the last week or so.

Ellis has been pretty bad at church lately. Maybe we don't bring enough toys. Maybe I need to actually make one of those 'quiet' books that other moms make their kids. Either way, Sacrament Meeting is really losing it's flavor with this kid around.

Soon as he's out in the halls though, he's happy as can be. He thinks he owns this place.

Floral is so in right now.

Don't you think I'm so fun mom???

The dreaded first haircut.

I miss that long mullet hair.

Picking mulberries outside our apartment- they made a really good pie!

This has been staring me down for a while. The dreaded test is on the 20th. One of the reasons I came down to Texas now was to eat all the good stuff before I potentially have to go on Atkins. I've heard of some doctors or whatever telling their patient 'just have a coke and a snickers bar before you come in', um, why can't my midwife do that? This orange stuff is so disgusting.

The other night we watched our favorite movie ever, Ghost Town. How did a movie so funny ever exist? Except, how we both fell asleep by 10, so we had to finish it the next day.
Bertram Pincus: Dr. Prashar - you're from a... scary country, right? 
Dr. Prashar: ...I'm from India...
Bertram Pincus: But, you're not... Christian, like us?
Dr. Prashar: ...I'm a Hindu...
Bertram Pincus: Yeah. So, um, how would you extract information from a hostile?
Dr. Prashar: Well... as a... Hindu person... I would just... ask him... politely... 

We ate at super fancy Lucca downtown, courtesy of Damon's longest drive in the golf tourney. It was soooo good and all fancy shmancy.

The cheese sample platter and the menu. Yum.

Ah, relaxin in my coordinating underthings.

This was before an epic freakoutmeltdown at Jason's Deli.

Dancing to Stevie Wonder in our craphole 'hotel' room in OKC.

Playing with my mom's chickens out back

My mom got me my favorite lotion for my birthday... MMMmmm.. I love this stuff, I could almost eat it.

Jake in the undies section at Target.

 Playing at the San Antonio Children's Museum...

If you don't watch this

we can't be friends.

An Epic Comeback

 can i just say how much i can't stand the word "epic"? i just can't. i don't know what it is, but that word. it gets me. anywho. 

i really am really really trying to do this blogging thing right. the hiatus was nice, but i know we have 3 family members and 2 friends in utah that read this thing, and i know they are DYYYYYYYING to know what we are up to out here in iowa, so this is me making a huge effort to be a decent blogger once again. 

lately we've been up to a couple things. 

       1. ellis- this kid is getting funny, man, he makes some funny noises and basically spends his whole day walking around the apartment shaking his head going 'hoo ha hoo ha hoo ha hoo ha'. yeah, hoo ha. i don't know where we got that from, but it's what he chose.

        2. church. damon is in nursery (where the 18 month to 3 year olds go for the last 2 hours of church) and he's super good at that, also bonus, he takes ellis with him. i am in young women's still and we are planning girl's camp at the moment. remember girl's camp? so fun! also i'm glad i'll be super huge pregnant and don't have to go out there. haha. 

      3. the bachelorette. is emily kinda boring? or is it too early in the season? 

      and 4. boards. damon's taking them the 29th of june, so until then, he's eatinglivingbreathingsleeping studying for the stupid test. i go back and forth twice a day about whether i should be leaving and spending the 6 weeks somewhere else, but i just can't be away from him that long, so here we still are. ellis and i are planning a little road trip down to texas in 2 weeks though, to eat good food and swim and see all our family there, and i'm excited!

also, i'm kinda tired of the layout of the blog, but if i'm too lazy to actually write posts, then i'm probably too lazy to change it. maybe later tonight over a pibb. 

the baby in me is still growing great, he was right on target during the ultrasound we had 3 weeks ao, though his mother is packing on the pounds at an alarming rate and hoping she doesn't have to switch to diet soda because of gestational diabetes. keep your finger's crossed, i think that glucose test is coming up. 

in other smaller news, i'm still trying to understand this iphone thing, but i did figure out what was eating up my mac's hard drive (duh, it was pictures, but i had to figure out where they were, and got back 90+ gigs of space), we started cloth diapering (easy! cute! i don't touch any poop!) and also damon ran the Tough Mudder, an obstacle type 12 mile race that looked super hardcore, i'll have to post pics/video when i can get them from him.

here are the pictures!

i'm trying to get ellis to wear hats. it's such a pain to try to put sunblock on his scalp what with all the mop of hair going on up there. he doesn't really like hats though so... maybe spray block?

this is ellis at the mall play place. he spends the entire time climbing around the bench seats. at this particular moment, he was flirting with a mexican lady sitting over there. he loves to flirt. he doesn't quite distinguish between men and women yet. when we go grocery shopping, he sits in the cart and smiles like this to anybody who walks by and calls out to them all high pitched. it's pretty funny.

michelle and i at drake diner, the 4 of us (oh yeah, and the kids) went for our last hurrah here in iowa (at least till brandon's graduation next may) before they left the next day for utah. what a sad day, i'm still in denial that she isn't here. but tonight when we take the shuttle to the farmer's market, past their house, i might have to look the other way. michelle, i miss you! also, she doesn't even look pregnant, isn't that so rude?

ellis helped me make gender reveal cupcakes for brandon and michelle. since brandon couldn't make it to the ultrasound she brought me a HIGHLY TOP SECRET SEALED envelope with the incriminating photo and i got to work on some crazy cupcakes with a little swirl of color in the middle, it was so fun! also i ate all the leftover cupcakes within 2 days.

as you can see, ellis really likes to help cooking (note, 2 nights ago he was up on the counter playing with those spices while damon made sandwiches and he touched the bag of cayenne pepper. not a good thing), here he's helping dad make a cake on Mother's Day.

he also loves more than anything else, being outside. i really wish we had a yard for the poor kid, but our apartment parking lot is ok by him. these pinecones are EVERYWHERE and every single time we walk out to the car, he collects them along the way, i probably have 2 dozen in my backseat.

 dad and ellis at the pond. we went to feed geese, but they weren't there. so we played with rocks instead.

cute huh?


when ellis flew like an eagle off the bed the other day, damon decided he should have a popsicle to stop his little mouth from bleeding. on our bed. that was one part of it. the other was when damon took it away from him and he cried like woah for half an hour.

 little artist...

 King of the Playground- right after this he plunged face first down the slide.

 This dude loooooves the swings. We stayed in there till he was actually ready to leave- without throwing down a fight all the way to the car!

this is a regular thing: damon puts one of my long boot socks on ellis, and one of my gloves on ellis. why use baby socks?

Hey, mom, cool phone!

Let me have it.

What's your problem?! Why aren't you sharing?

We went down to the open house for the Kansas City Temple.. It was beautiful and crowded and windy. But fun to take Ellis in the temple (though he was pretty obnoxious the whole time) and also our tour guides were so nice.

Then we took a super flattering picture outside.

Ellis got some booties and a snickerdoodle to reward his bad behavior.

But then we went to one of the best restaurants ever, Carrabbas! It was sooooo good. And then Damon drove us the almost 3 hours home in a torrential downpour and we still survived. Blessings!

That's been our life the last few days, what a fun weekend!

Also this:

 The first time he did this, Damon thought he was having a seizure.  Good news though, he's just being funny. Really funny- like last night he did it and maybe I peed my pants a little. I think it's funnier in person though, cause you can't tell really how hard he is shaking here. Also, hear that bird in the background? I took a nap while Ellis did, on that couch there. And that bird was still chirping once ever second. IT. WAS. SO. ANNOYING. So glad when dark came tonight and he went away. 

Hap Hap Happy Birthday!

Monday was Damon's birthday- the big 27!! Woah! That is kind of an adult year. When I was in middle school my favorite teacher was 27 (how did I even know that) and I thought wow, that is an interesting adult age- you are old, but young enough to still be cool. So I'm glad that Damon is at that age. and that I have a long way to go before I get there.

He is indeed the coolest 27 year old I know.

We had a pretty happening day. First. We celebrated mostly on Saturday because his real day was on a Monday- wah wuuuuhhhh... So. Back To Saturday. I can't remember now if Damon went to play basketball. So there's that issue. I do know that some day that we were celebrating his birthday, I made buttermilk pancakes (and didn't ruin pancakes for the first time ever!) and also buttermilk syrup which is the most classy and amazing thing ever and I don't know if I can eat Aunt J anymore. Then... I'm sure Damon had to go to school to study. I'm starting to think I have my pancake day and my celebrating day mixed up. And he came home at 5. No 4. Then our friend Michelle (who also had a birthday on Monday! But her spouse gave her a trip to New York City, so there's that, and Happy Birthday Michelle!) came over to watch Ellis scratch that we dropped Ellis off at her house to be watched and Damon and I went to the yummiest pizza place I've been to in forever. or Ever. Because I liked it better than The Pie (woah). It is called Felix and Oscar's and it is Chicago Deep Dish Pizza style and the crust is soooo good and flaky like a real pie and the sauce and also even the ranch dressing was soooo good. Mmmmm. I even let Damon take the leftovers for lunch yesterday cause it is his Birthday week after all.

This is really turning into something.

After pizza which took longer than expected we cut bowling from our agenda and instead went to a malt shop called Snookies. Which was also amazing and you should always support local businesses. Keep Des Moines Weird, I always say. Damon decided on a strawberry banana malt, which is a flavor I didn't think really existed in malt-ed-ness. But it did and it was good. So we picked up the little tyrant and went home and watched a movie. I think Captain America. It also could have been Crazy Stupid Love. Both were watched in one weekend, so who am I to remember.

Well. His real bday was on Monday, and so Ellis and I brought him a Razzbury Milkshake from the pharmacy by his school that was so good. And we gave him the gift of music via spotify. And then I made a lasagna and a strawberry lemon chiffon cake even. I think I even did the dishes, which was weird. Also we watched another movie I'm sure. This time Captain America.

Wow, what craziness!

Here are a very few pictures but not too many on account of for his birthday Damon decided to sell my Evo and pay $10 to get me a new Iphone. So I didn't really know how to use it well to document but there are a couple.

Ellis saying "welcome home from studying, dad!" Also note how few toys are all over the ground! I even cleaned!

Damon blowing out the matches, seeing as how we couldn't find the candles anywhere. Also my cake that turned into a mudslide.

Damon's gift to himself. That guy. "Happy Birthday Damon, you are going to be well fed. Love, Damon" What a sneak.

Happy Birthday to the best husband I could have ever asked for- he exceeded all expectations I had for myself (haha, wink, get it damon?)!

we need boxes

cause we'll be packing up all that girl stuff.

we are having another boy!

we are so excited to have to little men running around, 2 missionaries out at maybe the same time, 2 less wedding to foot the bill for... and maybe 2 little ginger boys?

via

via

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and of course...

via

Thrifting for a girl

So one of my all-time most favorite hobbies is thrift shopping- goodwill (though man, I miss DI so bad, everything is so clean and nice and not smoke-smelling), salvation army, garage sales, etc.  Lately I have had the bug big time!
This weekend I had some big scores at both garage sales and goodwill.
It's amazing to me that someone will pay $20 for a book and then sell it for a quarter in a garage sale. Children's books are things I think I'll never be able to get rid of, I love collecting them for Ellis. This weekend knocked a few classics off my list, here are my finds:

*You Are Special- Hardcover (i have this in a mini size but wanted a big one)

*Alexander, Who Used to Be Rich Last Sunday (i LOVE the Alexander books- I'm still hoping to find Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good Very Bad Day, but I'd break down and pay full price for that one if I have to)

*Another Alexander book that I can't remember or make out the title in the pic

*Goodnight Moon

*Goodnight Goon (a creepy parody, it says)

*The Runaway Bunny

*Love You Forever

and, some other ones that I of course can't remember and they are in Ellis room but he is napping. Anyways, I looked at all the prices in the books and added them up to $95 worth- I paid $5 for all of them- awesome!

Then later that day I took some alone time while Ellis was napping and went to mosey around Goodwill. Not only did I find 3 awesome old granny shirts for me that I love, but I found some amazing things for the baby... IF the baby is a girl. If it's not, well then they may be gifted, or they may sit in my box of girl things I've been collecting for the last 2 years. 

*2 crochet blankets made by somebody's grandma (I'd like to think), I love mint green, and will probably steer that direction with nursery items- if it's a boy it may still be mint green, just with orange or something like that. I love these two blankets and paid under $2 for each

*A big lacy cream curtain, which I originally thought may be a table cloth but upon bringing it home, it's not- but that's even better, because it would go perfect in a nursery or redone into something new

*White gown with pink trim (made in USA)

*Pink knitted jumper (made in Italy, from Saks)

*Pink dress with flowers (made in USA)

all three undoubtable older, considering, when was the last time you found something made in USA or Italy, and not the Philippines or Taiwan

I always said I didn't like light pastel colors for girls, but I do love anything vintage looking, and especially anything without characters and bogus creatures printed on them. So I love all of these.

We'll find out tomorrow if these will be used on a baby girl, or if they'll be stored away for #3!