It's begun: Spring Cleaning!

I wish this was in my house! Its very cute and organized!

Taking inspiration from a blog I like to follow, V and Co., I started Spring cleaning or more like organizing. (Although the weather is currently not cooperating-3 inches of snow yesterday, a half inch or so today, probably more tomorrow-at least most of it melts off by the end of the day.)

I cleaned out our "junk closet". It is just off the kitchen and has so many different things in it. It is a walk-in closet and has lots of shelves. We have bulk food in there, camping gear, a large cooler, file boxes, a couple 72-hour kits per person, kids craft stuff, stuff needed for homework, blankets for picnics, a large griddle, light bulbs, empty glade plugins, candles, flashlights, water bottles, and just random stuff. Yesterday, I organized it and made it look nice and easy to walk-in to. I seems like closets like this need to be organized every few months.

Then today I tackled my closet! I could clean it every week because there are clothes all over the floor at the end of every week. All moms who have ever been in the child bearing years know how hard it can be to get rid of clothes. You don't want to get rid of your pre-baby clothes because one day they might fit again (ignoring the fact that they will mostly likely be out of style when the time comes). And you want to keep bigger clothes, for the post-baby body, then the post-post-baby body where you are not the same as you were before, but you are not as big as you were shortly after the baby, and you have maternity clothes too.

With the opportunity to get back to my pre-baby weight I have been able to go through those pre-baby clothes and keep the ones that are still in style...or that will work with the current style. And also throw away most of those bigger post-baby clothes, or at least add them to the maternity box if they are worth keeping. I was able to get rid of 2 large bags of clothes and some shoes too. This is really really really good for me. I usually worry that if I get rid of too much I will not have enough to wear.

I still have more to do, but since it is not summer time yet and half the clothes I still need to go through are summer clothes, I'll be waiting for a while.

Now I challenge you! Go through you closet and get rid of stuff you haven't wore for over 6 months!

A Weekend with the Greats!

On the weekend of the March 20-21 was the International Art Competition, hosted by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. My Grandma Carolyn entered the contest and her piece got to be in exhibit in the Conference Center. On Friday we went to the Opening Ceremonies at the Conference Center. She made a folksy style family history quilt, that is quite fantastic! It was so fun to go and see. There were also other great pieces, some of which will find a permanent home in the Church History Museum.

This is Zac finding his name on the quilt.


Then on Saturday we took advantage of the beautiful day and went up to Thanksgiving Point with the family. We started at Farm Country. We have lived here for several years and have never taken a trip.

This is a cool little thing. Its a cow that you can "milk" water out of. Zac and dad were using the utters like a squirt gun getting Adam and me all wet!


Max is pretty sick here, so he got to have his pacifier.


They also have a livestock scale and we wanted to see how much we all weighed, it was somewhere around the weight of a sheep or cow!


Max was fascinated with the animals. He liked to touch them, but was also very nervous.


Zac liked to feed the animals, but he was too scared to have them eat out of his hand so he just put the corn on the barrier.


Then the boys got to ride the ponies. This is a first. They both loved it! It was so fun. Zac was pretty scared at first, but warmed right up. You can't see in this picture, but Max was sitting on the saddle so funny-like. He had his feet on the saddle trying to keep himself up as if he was going to start standing. After a few times around he relaxed and let his legs dangle.



He loved it and definitely wants to do it again. Papi convinced him that he wanted a pony for his birthday...Zac changed his mind when he learned about cleaning up the poop!

Zac concentrating.


Then we headed over to the Dinosaur Museum. It was fun to go with my parents and Lexie and Adam. Zac sure had a good time. Max had a fever, but he still enjoyed it a lot.


It was so good to get to visit with you Great Grandma and Grandpa Kolb, and Nani and Papi. Let's do another outing again soon!

Carrot Cake

Tonight we celebrated Jon's Birthday with the boys. We were hungry and tired and so we went and got Wendy's. Then enjoyed the masterpiece that is the Carrot Cake: 3 cups of flour, 2 cups of sugar, 1.5 cups of oil, 2 cups of carrots, a can of crushed pineapple, and 90 mins to bake!




One word: Cheese! (yeah cream cheese frosting... :P)

Zac got him a wire stripper/cutter tool and Max got him easy bike tire patches.

Wow, Jon that's like 3 days of birthday in the last week!! You have your work cut out for you come August! ;)
(PS I lost my camera again...there are pics of Jon in his new clothes...I hope I find it soon!)

Night on the town

Last night I surprised Jon and we went on a date in SLC. Rachel watched the boys. They slept over so we didn't have to worry about what time to be home. We had a great time. It was so nice to just do whatever and not be crunched for time. The flexibility was priceless!

After I made the cake, got ready for the day and packed the boys for their night. I took Zac to preschool and met up with Rachel. I dropped all the boys overnight gear to her car at work. Then we went to the mall for a quick trip. After preschool I came home to frost the cake and give Max a quick nap. I dropped the boys at my parents for an hour since Rachel wouldn't be home from work yet, and went to pick up Jon a little before 5:00. We needed to catch Trax is Sandy before 5:30.

A few years ago Emily took us to this cool new, used and rare bookstore in downtown, Sam Weller's Zion Bookstore. Jon loved it so I decided we'd go check it out for a while. It closed at 7:00-that is why we were in a hurry. They were having a sale! Yay! So we got a few books and enjoyed looking at shelves and shelves and shelves (I could go on for hours) of books. We got some short stories by Hawthorne, and Melville, and a book by Willa Cather, and Frank Norris. We really like American Lit.


Then we tried to decide where to have dinner, while staying in the area and close to the Trax line. We decided to go to the Nauvoo Cafe in the lobby of the Joseph Smith Memorial building. They serve hot sandwiches, soups and pot pies. Little did we know that Thursdays are their busiest days (because of the MoTab rehearsals). And today happened to be even busier than normal. They only had 1 kind of sandwich left, no soup, no pot pie :( ...we decided to stay anyway (because it was FREEZING outside!!)

Then we hung around the Memorial Building and enjoyed the architecture and asked a tour guide some questions (did you know that building used to be a hotel back in 1911? and that the ceiling in the lobby is original and most of the other design is too?)


Then we went up to the roof and enjoyed the view and talked about life.


Next, the plan was to go to the Keys on Main dueling pianos show. But when we got there about 9:15p it looked like there were only 2 or 3 people there. The more people the better the show. So we decided we'd just go another time with friends and on a weekend.

Here's a pic of the Bookstore and Keys on Main both red neon. The train was coming and I didn't have the flash up so this is the best I got.

Then we jumped on Trax to see if we could catch a movie at the Jordan Commons. Well we got on the wrong train. We were headed to the U of U. Luckily, we realized it on the next stop so we got off and had to wait 10 mins to get back to the Sandy Trax line. Meanwhile, we were entertained by some elderly drunks.

When we were waiting for the correct train to take us back to Sandy. A semi-suspicious guy came up to Jon and asked him if he had a cell phone...Jon hesitated for a second and then said yeah. The guy wanted to use Jon's cell to call his ride to meet him at a stop down the line. He told us that he had just come from "the drug dist.... er I mean drug testing". He was trying to get clean, and he didn't have a phone or a car. And that he has been out of jail for like 2 months. I was pretty nervous, and edged closer to him after he had the phone, in case he started to run off with it and I could shove him off the platform...Ha ha ha ha, I am such a dork!! So uptight!! I have hardly any experience in cities or the non-Mormon world for that matter...ok call me sheltered... I am. And it can be annoying... and a blessing.

Here Jon is texting Nordhoff on Trax...he looks like he could fit in with the bunch of teenage boys across the isle playing with their cell phones, ipod and "hanging out" all at the same time.


When we got to the Theater it was like 10:20, all the last shows had already started. There was only one that had barely start, Knowing. That movie with Nicholas Cage. I don't have anything against him, and I don't mind his acting as I know some do. I am going to spoil this movie...so anyone who doesn't want to hear it stop reading now.


At first the movie was pretty good. Jon was always pretty pessimistic about it and had no desire to see it after the previews on TV. After the first hour or so it was pretty good. The movie snob (Jon) was liking it.

Then the "twist" ending came, it was HORRIBLE!! Sorry for those of your who don't agree! It was INSANE! Aliens?!!?!? Are you serious!? Can you not get more creative than that!!?!? Its like they start a movie and they have a good thing going and they don't know how to end it...umm lets just make it aliens! How else can we resolve this. Who are they doing their market research to?! The CGI was bad and it was just LAME!! Not to mention Nicholas Cage's touching performance was too. Then when we didn't think it could get any worse...the aliens took the 2 children to another inhabitable planet to be the new Adam and Eve!!! (as intense solar flares are going to kill every living organisim on the Earth, of course)... AND there is even a tree of life!! What were they thinking!!?!?!?!?!? Seriously! We couldn't stop talking about how horrible that ending was for like 20 mins! Jon was soooo bugged that he "fell for it".... meaning he was initially impressed. Its always fun to bash a movie like this.

We had a great time last night. Happy Birthday Jon! And thank you to my parents for watching the boys and letting me use their camera and to Rachel and Jeremy for watching the boys overnight.

Happy Birthday!

It's Jon's Birthday today! He is 28, and already has gray hair! ;) So far today, we had a nice breakfast before he left for work, and made his favorite cake: carrot cake! Standby for more of what we did to celebrate this special day!
Happy Birthday Jonny, we love you!

Again?!

Another busy day: (sorry to bore most of you...I do use this as a journal of sorts)
Jon's Birthday is next week and I have had several ideas of things I wanted to get him, a big manly BBQer, a drill, books, g's, or new clothes. Being that his wardrobe is built of mainly simple, inexpensive, clothes that do not fit his personality, I headed to the mall today to catch a couple really good sales! I bought a few dressy shirts and pants. He feels bad taking the pins out of the shirts and having the sales people have to redo it all so he really doesn't like to try on clothes. So I brought a bunch of stuff home for him try on. Then I'll return what we don't keep.
After shopping I got Zac a soft pretzel so he wouldn't go to preschool hungry then dropped him at preschool. Then I met up with Jon for lunch (Max had a high fever and was breathing fast so I gave him some tylenol). After I dropped Jon back off at work I went to the grocery store and bought some milk, where I realized I lost my debit card. I called Subway and the Mall to see if it was turned it-luckily it was at the Mall. So I got Zac from preschool, went back to the mall, went to pick something up from a friends house, came home and put Max down for a nap , and called the Dr to see if I would need to bring him in, and for now we could wait. So I sat down and watched Casper with Zac (he was scared of the mean ghosts).
I checked Max after his nap and his chest was retracting and he was still breathing hard and fast, and had a fever about 102. So I called the dr again and we went into the after hours office. (I didn't make it to the Bunko game). Jon met us over there after work. Max tested positive for RSV-ugh! Again?! His oxygen counts were good, so they gave him a nebulizer treatment to clear his lungs and we went to the hospital to get him suctioned (what a nightmare those are) so he could breath easier. Then I brought the boys home, while Jon picked up Papa Murphy's since it was already 8:00p. Then I gave Max a luke warm bath and his fever dropped a lot. He was happy, playing, and breathing and eating better all before bed-what a blessing! I am so glad that this isn't as bad as last year so far. The Dr said today and tomorrow should be the worse days. I hope so.
After getting the boys in bed. I made Jon do a fashion show for me. We decided on a fitted lighter purple button up shirt from Express and some black double pin strip slacks from Banana Republic. Then later I ran to the store and grabbed him some black dressy shoes. Jon can be very fickle with deciding what he wants to wear. He loved wear quality, fitted, stylish clothes. Happy birthday, Hon!

A bit stressful, but overall, another satisfyingly busy day.

St. Patrick's Day activity tutorials

A couple of activities for kids:

How to draw a leprechaun

How to make a 4 leaf clover

We are also going to make a rainbow (using the macaroni we colored a few weeks ago) with a pot of gold at the end with glitter...standby for the finished products!