Love in So Many Terrible Pictures: Or Feeling Mushy on Valentine's Day

Love is messy

Love thinks you're funny

Love always acts surprised when receiving a gift

Love fearlessly eats home made ice cream cake at a picnic

 Love makes Budino

Love keeps you warm (This is a contraption of Colin's own design. I'm in there on a camping chair parked right over the heater).

(This is another one known as the "Hot Laundry Nap")

Love cheats, but only at cards

Love is not afraid of your friends

Love's favorite pictures of you are the stupidest

Love is ok that you dressed like a bee when you turned 23 (because you wore a tutu at 22)

 Love is patient while you pet ALL the animals at the park.

 And even more patient when you pretend to be them

 Love doesn't mind a bad hair day

 Love takes an interest in your hobbies

Love takes care of you when you're sick

Love will wait FOREVER while you talk to your mom

Love will be whatever crazy thing you want for Halloween

 Sometimes love dances

 When it's raining, Love has that picnic in the car.

 Love likes your crazy family

 

Love goes and goes

 And grows and grows

 And grows

 And grows

And grows.

Hardcore Nesting: Spring Cleaning

Either it’s the smell of spring in the air, or just watching every episode of Lush House while I was home sick, but I have been on a spring cleaning rampage. I’ve always been a bit of a rampage cleaner. I’m not so great with the day-to-day stuff, but I love the weird power rush that comes from throwing out a ton of junk and making everything orderly and clean. I heard somewhere that leaving projects undone leaves a constant low-level of stress on you all the time. So, I decided to make a day or two out of knocking out every project that’s been bothering me. Mind you, most of them haven’t bothered me enough to have not procrastinated taking care of them in the first place, but what can I say, no time like the present.

Here are a few of the project’s I’ve checked off the list:

1. Start a donation box: I was amazed how quickly ours filled up just from sitting open in the corner. I went through it once before donating and was surprised how much useless junk was in there that I wouldn’t miss.
2. Scrub the bathtub: I mean REALLY scrub it. You know what really works for this? Baking soda. Go figure?
3. Clothes: Put away all out of season or pre-pregnancy clothes. Donate anything you wont use. This came down to just about everything. Basically if it’s not a jersey knit, I’m not wearing it.
4. You know all those half empty bottles of lotion of conditioner? Heat them up in the microwave and pour them into one bottle. Throw away the rest. I’m trying not to hang on to products I bought that ended up failed experiments.
5. Papers: put ‘em away or throw them away. We broke down and bought a shredder at Wal-Mart recently. This is the first step on the path to our paperless pipe dreams. The next step will be to get a doc scanner. We’ve only gotten through a few stacks of shred so far, but paper beware! The doc-pocalypse is coming!
6. Clean out squirrel holes: This is what I like to call any easy to reach places where you inevitable squirrel away objects you are too lazy to find a place for. For us this was out living room bookshelf, coffee table baskets, and night stands.
7. Do an overhaul on the fridge: For some time now, I feel like our fridge has had an unidentified funk that lingers despite numerous cleanings. I clean it, open the door an hour later, and there’s the funk again! Our place is pretty small, and I swear I can smell it from other rooms.  UGH! This time I took everything out of the fridge, cleaned it with vinegar, then cleaned containers as I put them back in. I topped it off with some fresh baking soda, and it seems to have done the trick.
8. Cleaning up the sickness: So far this spring, I’ve had three colds. It’s kinda sucked. We’ve had the humidifier going non-stop and endless trails of tissues and various illness related paraphernalia cluttering up every surface. Well that’s all over now. I got this marvelous idea from pinterest about doing a Cold Caddy. This has a two fold purpose 1) it keeps all your cold stuff together and stores neatly under the sink. 2) it’s easy to take with you from room to room instead of making a zillion trips every time you need something.
9. Plastic boxes, labeling, and un-labeling: Those plastic shoe-box like containers from the dollar store (or Ikea) have been a complete revelation to me. There are very few small messes that cant be contained, neatly stacked, and labeled in one of these suckers. Last summer we did our whole downstairs closet for about $10 in boxes and maybe $20 in extra shelves. We’re also repurposing some plastic drawers we have to put baby clothes in. Since we’ve had them it’s always bugged me that I couldn’t get the labels all the way off. I busted out the Goof Off to get the job done, but I understand you can get a similar, less smelly, effect by using tea tree oil.
10. Clean out the planters from last summer: This one is a little embarrassing. My poor little container garden was ravaged by every form of wildlife. At one point I saw a chipmunk, halfway up my cherry tomato plant, munching away and boldly staring me down right through the glass. I guess living at high elevation  makes animals brazen.  By the end of the summer,when my herbs were bolting and my veggies had all but dried up, I just gave up on the garden. It sat out there with it’s pathetic little stocks sticking up out of the snow all winter. Since we’re planning on moving this summer, I decided the contain my intense springtime plant-o-mania for one season (though it’s not easy). Since I’m planning on re-using my soil, I decided to beef it up a bit while it stews in a container all season. To do that I added organic fertilizer, cocoanuts fiber, and what is said to be the black gold of soil—earthworm castings—known to most a worm poo. All the pots got scrubbed with soap and shelved.


11. Raise bed up for more storage underneath: We now have our bed high enough to fit laundry baskets underneath. It’s so nice not having that stuff stacked in the corner anymore.

Here are a few more natural cleaning tips I picked up from watching far too much TV:
Kitchen:

• Use wax shavings and a blow dryer to keep things out of grout
• Soap the sides of drawers that stick to get them to slide smoothly
• Lavender water cleans counters well and leaves a lovely smell
• Clean fans, baseboards, shelves, picture frames, etc. with dryer sheets to further repel dust
• Run dishwasher empty with a bowl of vinegar in the top
• Use magazine holders for ziplocks, saran wrap, tin foil, etc.

Bathroom:

• Wax the shower walls
• Clean stuffed animals by putting them in a pillowcase with unprocessed bran and a tablespoon of vinegar. Shake. Brush clean.
• Use pantyhose to get in stubborn areas around faucets

Living Room:

• Clean wood with tea and lavender oil
• Put baby powder on creaky stairs
• Clean couch with bran and /or bran ball. Mix unprocessed bran with vinegar until it comes together like brown sugar. Put into stockings and rub couch or sprinkle and vacuum.
• Plaster of Paris to get stains out of marble
• A table top fountain will help keep down dust-- add lavender for scent
• Use a sock or paper towels clipped to tongs for cleaning blinds

Bedroom:

• Clean mattress with baby powder and baking soda
• Use TP rolls in a box to sort extra cords for phone chargers, USB cords, etc.

Carpets:

• Suck up a damp tea bag into the vacuum cleaner bag to kill dust mites
• Use a pair of nylons on the end of a vacuum hose to suck up spilled beads without getting them into the main part of the vacuum.

Stubborn Problems:

• Suck on labels: use rubbing alcohol, or tea tree oil
• Spray Oil of Cloves to remove mold

Pets:

• Clean itchy dogs with mint and regular tea mixed together

Cervix the Size of a Bagel—and Other Food Analogies I Learned in Birth Class

In a moment of maternal anxiety, we finally decided to take my midwife’s advice and attend a birth class. Being cheap, and relatively impatient, we took a class that was supposed to be a “natural birth refresher” for second time parents. This meant we did the class all in one Saturday, instead of several afternoons over four weeks. I can only assume they must be reading What to Expect When Your Expecting cover to cover to fill that time. I’m sure the things we learned in class will be helpful for my labor. But I’m also pretty sure they were trying to prepare us for the squishy nakedness of birth  by just embarrassing the snot us right up front. I guess they figure if you can handle the class, then you should have no problems during labor.

Here are some of the gems I picked up:

1. Birth class can be a scared straight experience for husbands. Just take a look at this chart:

If your lovely spouse ever had any reservations about his wife turning into a ferocious she-beast, this would solidify them. I would not show this to your partner before you get pregnant if you ever want him to be on board with the idea.  I’m sure in his head he goes to sleep one night with the lovely smiling lady in phase number one, and wakes to the full kabuki nightmare that is stage two.



2. All Parts of Labor can be Explained in Terms of Food:

Your cervix goes from the size of a cheerio to the size of a bagel. Right now, my baby is the size of a pineapple and will soon be the size of a small pumpkin.  I feel like a watermelon. When I think about that I get a little hungry. Then I get a little anxious about that pineapple coming out of that bagel. Then the anxiety just makes me hungry again.  Cheerio x bagel + pineapplepumpkinmelon = breakfast?

3. You don’t have to do EVERYTHING the pamphlet suggests:

Does anyone notice something odd about this picture? Why is the supposedly laboring woman fully dressed and the man is… well… let’s just say it might be a bit awkward for the nurses.

4. If you don’t make a lot of noise, they might dial up the Pitocin without telling you.
Also birth class is an excellent time to share horror stories.

5. If you don’t know how to make a lot of noise, it’s ok. Birth class will teach you.
Still feeling inhibited? How about if we perch you on all fours or make you squat next to the windowsill? Would you like to be taught how to draw a tree on your spouse’s back while under the watchful eyes of strangers? You can learn it all in birth class.

I cant help thinking, in the moment, you’re gonna do what you’re gonna do, and no amount of practice moaning can actually “prepare” you.  Even if you do what you want, that doesn’t mean things will go as planned. I have my doubts about any kind of birth “plans” at all. That’s not to say that I don’t advocate birth education.  As someone who’s first maternal instinct was “panic hard and freak out now!” I’d be remiss if I told anyone not to learn as much as they can.  Anyone who checked my google history or library records could tell you I’ve been obsessively reading on the subject. Could eating tuna fish give my baby lower SAT scores? Is this Coke I had with lunch going to give her osteoporosis in her 60s? There is so much to worry about, and so little time.

As I started to run out of pop-science mommy guilt books, I started reading memoirs and fiction. Here’s one passage I came across in Waiting for Birdie by Catherine Newman that stuck with me:

With your first baby, you think (medication) is actually an important decision. Only later do you realize that a) you understand nothing about labor until it is happening to you, and b) birth is just a tiny town--barely a black dot--on the enormous, complicated road map that is the rest of your life as a parent. Mistaking birth for the main event is like thinking that the floral arrangements at your wedding will somehow determine to quality of your marriage . You don’t realize that the hard part--the real part--comes later.

So maybe I’ll relax a little about birth now. I’m going to be a parent. I may never relax about anything else again.

Hardcore Nesting Using Craigslist

Want to meet moms in your area? Try looking for baby stuff on craigslist. Not only did Colin find us this awesome rocking chair for a steal, but the mom we picked it up from seriously had all the dirt on where to do your baby shopping in the area! Bonus! This little treasure fit neatly in the back of our car with the help of a little creative roping. It came in a slip cover that will probably remain on the chair just to protect it, but I was so impressed by the lovely linen that was lurking underneath that it seemed almost tragic to put it back on. However, after the slip cover was washed, dried, and ironed with a little lavender oil (a trick my mama taught me), it has that fluffy essence of home that makes me want to spend all my time there. One of us can almost always be found here relaxing after work. It’s become like our second living room.

Counting Steps

I’ve recently purchased a small pedometer to keep track of my steps in an effort to improve my health, since I mostly sit all day at work, and the health problems associated with sitting a lot are well-documented.  The first step (ha ha, get it…STEP….) for me is to figure out how well I’m doing.

My pedometer.  If only that was my daily total!

There are some fancy pedometers that keep track of all sorts of things and sync your fitness data to a website or smartphone with fancy charts and graphs, but they’re rather expensive. Mine is a basic 3-axis model that tracks the previous 7  days.  Every Sunday I update a spreadsheet so I can see my progress.  My goal is to get the dashed line closer to 10000, which is the recommended number of steps per day.  Some observations: I walk a lot more during the week than I do on weekends, probably because I try to walk around the block for 15 minutes every day after lunch during the week.  The drastic swings from one day to the next might be the pedometer picking up my leg jiggling during the day, since I think I normally walk about the same amount from day to day. I’ll have to investigate this further.

Apples

I did this as a demo for the kids in art class. Kinda like how it turned out.

New Year and a New Addition

Better late than never right? This was going to be our Christmas card this year. With flying coming back from DC and a sudden spat with bronchitis (so fun) it just never happened for us.

So what’s with the little shoes? That’s right! This year we’re expecting our first new addition to the family! I’m sorry if you’re one of the people that we never got to tell in person. I chalk that up to my personal inability to make announcements of any kind. Right now I am 16 weeks pregnant, past morning sickness, and maybe just starting to show. The baby is due July 10th, 2013. We haven’t found out the gender yet, but plan to around Valentines Day.

2013 promises to be a year of big changes for us, along with a new baby, we’re also planning a job change (Me, not Colin), and moving houses (though not very far). We are so excited for all the adventures yet to come.

Some other significant events from the past year:

• Moved out of Provo to be closer to Colin’s work.
• Colin finished his first year at Brown and Caldwell and is enjoying his job while Katie has continued working as a loan officer. 
• We went on a short vacation to Bear Lake and Cache Valley.
• Learned to paddleboard
• Colin built an awesome console table and workbench
• Katie’s painting got accepted to the Springville Religious Art Show.
• Discovered Colin’s previously unknown love for parsnips (aka, the albino carrot)
• Visited friends and family for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
• Sang in a local Handel’s Messiah sing-a-long.

We’re so thankful for supportive family and friends!  Hope you have a great year!

Resolutions

It’s not even January, and I have already been thinking about my new years resolutions for months. I love the ambition of making a goal to last a whole year. There is something about it that leaves me tingling with possibilities. I love a good challenge and an extended project (even if I sometimes only love them in theory).  Recently, I’ve taken to reading a number of books from what I call the “12 month genre.” These books all have a simple plot recipe: pick something crazy, do it for a year, and write about it. I don’t know if it’s the intentionality of it or just the meticulous note keeping that draws me in, but I just LOVE the idea. Colin and I usually write out year long goals in the typical fashion—we pick a few areas of our life, and work on a goal in each one.We generally follow up with smaller goals each week on Sundays.  It’s not to unlike Zig Ziglar’s Wheel of Life:

Generally speaking, we’re not super-awesome at following up on our goals and we have mixed results in keeping out annual resolutions.  I can say with a fair amount of confidence that we live closer to our ambitions than we would without any goals at all, but there is still plenty of room for improvement.

This year I’d like to do something different. Earlier this year I read Dave Ramsey’s EntreLeadership, and it stuck with me when he said, “The difference between a dream and a goal is a plan.”  He also talked about having measurable goals so you can track your progress. If you don’t see any traction in your goals, you quickly get to feeling like a hamster in a hamster wheel and give up. That sounds about right to me. Given my innate love of charting and journaling, I think some sort of recording method would be right up my ally. Here are a few things I am considering doing this year:

1. Start a Happiness Project:
I recently finished reading The Happiness Project by Gretchin Rubin. There are lots of books in that 12 month genre where the authors seek to radically change their world in some way. Some of these include books like Eat, Pray Love—where the author gets divorced and goes off to globe trots and find herself for a year. There is also The Year of Living Biblically, where the author goes to extreme measures to keep every rule or law in the bible for a whole year. What inspired me about this book was that the author sought to “change her life, without changing her life.” In The Happiness Project, the author keeps her same job, lives in the same apartment, keeps the same basic schedule and still changes her life to bring more happiness in. She comes up with a few rules for herself and one area with a few goals to work on each month. She also charts herself every day to see how she’s doing on her resolutions. This appeals to me because a) I love charts and b) it seems more manageable than daily journaling. Also, I like the idea that I could change or add a focus every month.

2. 365 Project
This is an idea where you take a photo every day for a year. Seems like an easy way to document as long as you always have your camera phone in your pocket. A byproduct might be that it would help me take better pictures and make better compositions all together.

3. Nulla dies sine linea:
Or “No day without a line.” This is a Latin saying that I got one of my professors in college. The idea is that you paint or draw something every single day. Most artists need to make a ton of junk before they ever make anything good. The idea here is that if you increase your volume, you’re more likely to make good work. Maybe a simpler version could just be to create something every day. I like this idea because it would force me to focus on what I actively put out, and not just on what I passively receive (service to others is ultimately very creative).

4. Gratitude journal:
Got the idea for this from One Thousand Gifts. Pretty straight forward idea there. Highly considering this notebook if I do a gratitude journal (did I ever mention my intense fondness for all things office supply?)

5. Self directed Young Women’s type program:
In our church, there is a program for young women called Personal Progress. It has eight values and each year you have several goals you complete in each value. The program is designed to go all through high school. I finished my Personal Progress Program as a teenager and loved the experience. I notice, however, there aren’t a lot of programs like that for adults. I think it could be fun to give myself projects based on the aims of Relief Society.

6. Just Blog More:
A blog is really a great format for tracking goal progress. You can include pictures, words, drawings, videos-- and you have the added element of accountability to your readers once you post something. I may or may not think about blogging every day. Once or twice a week might do it for me (it’s a lazier goal).

I think all of these ideas would help me track my progress. Some would be less scientific ways than others. I’ll keep mulling it over and let you know what I decide in January!

Lights in Draper Park

I saw this from the road and thought, “you gotta be kidding me!” Talk about your tree of life!

Things I’m Thankful For

“So much has been given to me; I have no time to ponder over that which has been denied.”

Helen Keller

In appropriate Thanksgiving fashion I thought I would talk about what I’m grateful for.  Here are just a few:

1. Thanksgiving and Holidays in General

There is something about the winter holidays that just gets me so excited. I think it may be the license we all get this time of year to be just a little more cheesy than usual. You may have to bear with me as a spew gouda. Wow, that does sound bad. Oooz? Shmear? why are all cheese appropriate adjectives so nasty sounding? Personally I find a good cheese quite delightful.

Christmas cheese.  See.  Delightful!

Because we were unable to visit family this year, Colin and I decided to go low key for Thanksgiving. Since we’ve been eating every. meal on the coffee table since September, I thought it would be a little silly to do a whole Thanksgiving spread just for us.  Instead, we went to an early showing of The Muppets (Colin’s all time favorite stuffed goof balls) and dinner at Cracker Barrel.

As a wax cheesy and sentimental today, there is no better ball of brie than The Muppets. I know they’re a fuzzy big eyed creatures perfectly designed to pacify and enchant your wiley toddlers. I know this. I know and I don’t care. Don’t adults need to be pacified and enchanted? Yes. Definitely yes.

2.This Guy

Before the movie,  we prepared to stuff ourselves with more candy than a piñata by going for a walk in the park (yeah, those equal out calorie-wise). At the first crunch-crunch of his feet on the pavement Colin got a look on his face that can only be described as sheer delight.  It started off slowly enough: crunch crunch drag drag crunch crunch shuffle shuffle crunch crunch kick kick KICK KICK KICK! In no time at all we we got the image seen here. Of course, there was no coaxing from me at all….

That’s what I love about this guy. He delights in the small things. Since he generally hates to be the center of attention, you wont often catch him making a big fuss and gathering a crowd. But if you watch closely he’ll show you all the fun and beautiful things you were missing all along.

That’s how he is with service too. I remember once I broke the zipper pull on the top of my purse and spent the next week or so slowly inching the zipper shut with my fingernails. One day I was sitting on the couch blabbering away in my usual fashion and as we were leaving I grabbed my purse, zipped it up, and headed for the door.  I zipped it up. I was halfway to the door when I had to do a double take. I had just zipped it straight across without thinking. Somehow, wordlessly, the zipper pull had re-appeared in perfect repair.

That magic thing that keeps things always working: That’s Colin.

The thousand times I’ve woken up covered in a blanket that I never grabbed. The magic stacked-and-wrapped sandwich in the fridge when I know I only have five minutes for lunch. The extra alarm clock that sounds just after I’ve shut mine off. The path shoveled in the snow to a cleanly de-iced car. All the suddenly working electronics, renewed library books, clean sink—it’s all him.

I’m thankful for him every day. Sometimes I forget, and he always finds a way to remind me.

3. Friends Like These

This is a little game of “spot the fakers”—a new baby shower classic

This is the closest picture I could find to all of us together. It’s a little bit of an older picture. Both the actually pregnant moms have 2 kids now. All of us fakers were just showing (pun intended) our support for the baby shower. The only one that’s missing is Stiffy, but he’s behind the camera. He was “showing” his support too—which I’m sure only further confused people looking at the shower pictures on facebook.  I would almost give my right arm to have a video of Stiff leading pregnancy yoga in his trendy turban. Sometime I will have to write about the “epic” parties we threw. This was definitely one for the books.

Every now and again you get friends in life where your relationship is so easy it’s almost a given. That’s what these ladies are like, no matter what happens or where we all move, any time we get together we instantly pick up from where we left off. Every time we get together we make each other fall on the floor laughing. Literally in one case where Abby and I broke my dorm room bed from laughing too hard.  I’m thankful for soft floors and storing enough crap under my bed to break a fall.

Some people collect red shoes. I collect red heads. Not weird right?

Here’s another friendly picture. This time of year I always think of these friends for the reason of one majestic beast: the turkey. Late one night when we and I were teenagers we headed to Sheets at midnight for Nachos ‘cause that’s just what you do sometimes. For some reason we had been making a ton of turkey noises and had this thought:

What if you made turkey noises all the time?

What if it was uncontrollable like laughing, shuttering, or sneezing?

What if you did it every time you got cold?

Thus the “cold turkey” impressions followed. It was one of those things that’s not really funny, but at the same time it REALLY REALLY is. Shortly to follow came the flirty turkey, pompous turkey, turkey-caught-in-the-act, and best of all the angry turkey. There are not words that can describe the roll-on-the-floor-ability of Emily’s angry turkey. Of all things this Thanksgiving season. I’m thankful for the angry turkey.  I may have recounted this story last year…and I will probably do it for every Thanksgiving to come.

4. Family

This is the Family 3-4 years ago at Thanksgiving. Yeah, we kind a fill a room. I think we were close to 30 people that year. My family has children and my aunt has five—add in grandma, children, and a few significant others and boom—thirty foot table has suddenly become a necessity. I’m pretty sure all the adults regress about 10 years whenever we eat together. Even now, Mom still counts the minutes it takes for the conversation to disintegrate into “potty talk”—“15 minutes. That’s a record!” It’s always faster if Robert is there. I can think of nowhere else that I would be that comfortable. I love my family.

With Colin traveling so much this year I have experienced something new: being home alone. I’m pretty sure it never happened to me before. I’ve always had family or roommates to keep things moving. What did I discover about being along?

I hate it more than sticking toothpicks in my eyeballs.

Alright, maybe not that much. But it still makes me wicked uncomfortable.

I should mention here that I am a particularly bad sleeper. I don’t mean that I am restless, I mean that I am sleep crazy. Usually for a few minutes after I wake up I am still acting in my dream. Once woke up completely startled because I thought someone had broken into our house and was watching TV (one of the three channels on our sweet 10 inch). I shook Colin awake and insisted that he go look. As it turned out we had left a DVD in the drive that had restarted a few hours after we left it. I also pulled a knife from our top kitchen drawer because I thought someone was breaking into our apartment (on the third story). What I’m trying to say here is thank you family for never letting me kill myself or anyone else in my sleep.

I love my big fat white family (pretty sure we’re not Greek).

Also, I love my grandma who sent me this picture one Thanksgiving:

You guys are the best. Happy Thanksgiving!