Bullet Hole in the Window

It is 3:00pm and yes I'm still in my PJ's. I'm sitting in my Grandma's old blue recliner. The evidence that her Italian frame used to sit in it, can still be found upon the head rest of the chair in the form of a blackish/purplish hair dye stain, that no matter how hard I scrub won't come off the chair.
My sweet baby girl is wrapped in my arms and is taking a small hiatus from crying.
We are staring past the glittered, popcorned asbestos ceiling, staring past the bullet hole in the front room window where our neighbors teenaged son shot at my cat with his bb gun. We are looking at the pastel blue sky that is littered with fluffy, white summer clouds. Nobody can tell me my life is not perfect, not even the bullet hole in the window.

***Baby You're A Firework***

The 4th of July is my second favorite holiday for so many reasons. I'm thankful for the freedom we enjoy and grateful for those who have fought to insure that freedom. I love fireworks and I love celebrating with my family!
We always have a day packed with fun things to do and this year the lil' miss got to celebrate her first 4th. And luckliy we have the cutest pictures of her first July 4 ...oh wait we had cute pictures, Chris may or may not have accidently erased them( and by may or may not, I mean he did). Including the cutest picture of Elanora's one year old cousin, Lexie kissing(more like licking) her cheek, Elanora watching the parade with her cousins and her first roll over from back to tummy(she has been rolling from her tummy to her back since 2 weeks, but this was her first back to tummy roll). Poor Chris felt so bad. I laughed, because it was kind of funny :) Luckily, he erased them before the fireworks so we got cute pictures at the fireworks and today I put babyface back in her festive outfit and took pictures and she rolled again so I got more rolling pictures too.
7:40-Put Nora in car seat
7:42-Take her out to fix the diaper blowout
8:00-Breakfast with family at the Layton park
10:30-Parade (not actual parade pictures...remember those were erased)
11:00-Walking around Layton park
12:00-Buying a whole stab of
ribs from the True Vine Baptist Church
(yummiest ribs ever!)
1:00-Alternating naps and baby watching duty
2:00-Elanora rolls over>>


(these picturesare from today, not yesterday...someone accidently erased the ones yesterday...poor Chris, I'm having too much fun at his expense:)
3:00-Chris erases the pictures and is dissapointed
I laugh,it is sad but pretty funny too :)
(Chris is cute when he is frustrated)
4:00 Chris tries to get the pictures to come back,
I read.
6:00-Fed the horses
7:30-Back to the park for fireworks


12:00-sleeping comfortable in a nice warm bed

Blessing Day

Sunday Elanora got blessed. It was so wonderful! Chris did a good job and he even made me cry (I pride myself on the control I have on the flood gates).
We were so blessed to have family and friends there to support us! Chris's sister and her family were in from Georgia. It was the first time we got to meet our niece Kamryn, she is super cute! We love having them here and we all think they should move back to Utah :) we miss them!
Unfortunately my Brother and his cute family could not be there, they were in California visiting family. We really missed them.
Elanora wore the blessing dress that I wore when I got blessed. She looked so beautiful, although she hated wearing it.

It is a tradition that my mom knits a blanket for her grand babies when they get blessed. She keeps what the blanket looks like a surprise until right before the blessing day. It was fun waiting to see what it would look like. Elanora's blanket did not disappoint, it is beautiful! It is the blanket she is laying on in the pictures.

It was a wonderful day. Boy, do we feel blessed to have a wonderful family, great friends and a beautiful baby girl!(who was not so happy when getting her pictures taken :))

1 half craft + 1 half craft = 1 whole craft

This is my weekly crafting post, although I don't do crafts every week. I don't even do crafts once a month, but other awesome blogs I have seen and thoroughly enjoy do weekly posts(i.e. weekly questions, crafts, song, and style). So here is my weekly...looks like it is Tuesday...so I'll call it Terrific Tuesday craft. And I fully intend on not doing a craft every Tuesday.
My first craft I did is a magnet board with ribbon on it. The use... hold Elanora's hair bows. Technically my friend from work gave me the magnet board. I painted the frame and added the ribbon and voila, a hair bow holding thingy. Now this is what I call a half craft because my friend did most of the work.


My next craft that I did is Elanora's name to hang on the wall over her crib. I painted the letters, the frame I found at Hobby Lobby. I painted that too. I put material that matches her crib quilt(I have the material but have no idea how to make a quilt, so the quilt is pending)behind the E. Now this is also a half craft because my talented husband(who also has a nice butt among other talents) painted the detail on the 'E'.

So there you have it, 1 half craft + 1 half craft = 1 whole awesome Terriffic Tueday craft!

3 strikes and I'm out

Sunday was the big day...little Nora's first time at church and let's just say it did not go as planned.
I had anxiety all week about going, but was excited to get back into the swing of things and what better time. Elanora is on meds for acid reflux so she no longer cries that sad, loud, pain cry. She had her first round of shots, so she would be able to fend off all those awesome nursery kid germs. And I was ready to run down the street screaming because of cabin fever. Really everything was in place for a perfect day at church. Right?
Things did not start out quite as I had planned. I wanted to make a handout for my calling so I could pass it out at church, but because I worked on the handouts I was behind in getting me ready...Strike one.
The cute babyface woke up later than usual, throwing her eating schedule off, so she ended up needing to eat at 11:30. I had wanted her to eat at 12:30 so I could get her to sleep before church, now she was going to be hungry right in the middle of church...Strike two.
I had wanted to drive her around before church so that she would be nice and asleep before we got there, but because I made handouts I did not get ready until 12:30 and by the time we got in the car it was time to be there...Strike three.
Three strikes, I was definitely out and I had not even started the game yet. Oh boy. This was going to be fun.
Now the sweet little doll has colic so when she starts crying sometimes it does not stop and she is loud. I was nervous. I had a baby who was wide awake and does not like to just hang out, she is a mover and a shaker.
We did not even make it to the Sacrament. She was tired and fussy, so we had to walk out, then she was hungry, then she had a complete blowout in the diaper region.
Chris had to give the Bishopric message in Primary so I was trying to carry my baby(who was very messy and fussy because of said diaper region), her carrier, and the diaper bag. I don't know how you mothers with 10 kids do it.
We did not make it very long at church...But she looked cute and there is always next week :)

DON'T MAKE ME BUST OUT THE NAKED PICTURES!

I have always thought that the first time I would traumatize little Nora would be on her first date. The door bell will ring and I'll anwser it, so she can make her grand entrance. As the cute boy waits for his beautiful date... you better believe I'll bust out all of those cute, naked baby pictures of Elanora, embarrasing her to no end! But alas, I'm traumatizing her now :(
Yesterday she had to get shots and it was horrible! I hated every second of it. Chris took off work because I figured it might be a little tough to deal with and we would need big, strong daddy to get us both through it.
It was so sad! The nurses put her on the table and as they were talking to Chris and me, telling us what was going to happen, Elanora was looking at them talk and thinking they were talking to her, she smiled and smiled at them. Not knowing they were going to stab her violently in the leg (a little drammatic...I think not, it was that horrible).
I watched the nurses put the needle in her leg and everything was in slow motion. I looked at babyface and her smile faded and she got a confused look on her face. I thought for a minute she was not going to cry, but then the pain hit her and she let out the most horrible cry I have ever heard. Now we've heard a lot of crying from my sweet little girl because she has acid reflux and colic, but this is the worst thing I have ever heard. Chris grabbed her fast, he held her tight and I grabbed her from him with tears filling my eyes, listening to the most horrific noise I have ever heard. The nurse was talking to us about the next appointment, I did not hear any of it(hopefully Chris did).
I thought I was doing good with just a few silent tears as we walked out the door, but when we hit the pavement of the parking lot I completely lost it and started sobbing along with my baby girl. Eventually we both calmed down, she was so tired that she fell asleep, but when she woke up an hour later she was hurting and crying that worst-cry-ever cry, so we gave her baby tylenol and she calmed down. Boy did my heart hurt, she was traumatized (as I write this she is sleeping peacefully in her swing and I'm tearing up, but it was her that was traumatized).
I guess showing her boyfriends her naked baby pictures won't be her first traumatic experience :) and for fun, here are the cutest bath pictures ever!

Don't Judge Me

I really did not mind being preg-o, I never got too miserable. I was still feeding horses the night before I went into labor. But there were a few simply pleasures that were a little hard to give up. It has been one long year of not doing this...

So rain, rain go away come again another day, so that I can ride my big, blue horse!
Another one of my simple pleasures that I'm glad to have back(do not judge me), raw hot dogs. I love to eat raw hot dogs. I just can't wait the point three seconds it takes to cook them in the microwave and frankly,(the pun is for Chris who thinks this practices of eating raw hot dogs is disgusting)I love them and their yummy, slimy goodness! Now don't judge me, you should try them(although my judgment might be a little off because I have licked a giant slug for $5 and on Mother's Day I licked a snail so that my niece would lick one.)
Even though giving up riding my horse and eating raw hot dogs was hard, look at the perfect baby that two very imperfect people made.