Childhood

Jordan can get really giggly. I LOVE that sound! I love to hear his happy little laugh. He loves when I put my head into his tummy and shake. He grabs on to my hair and laughs and laughs. This is Emmie playing with Jordan at Thanksgiving at Janelle's house.

Why are babies about 6 times as lovable when they are sleeping?

"Jordan, sweetie…"

"it's time to eat your vegetables."

Jordan's skin is so white and soft. He's in the 95% for his height. His head is small, so he's overall a slim little guy. He likes to put his finger in his mouth and put it to the side. He's so adorable.

When Jordan cries Lizzy walks up to him and sings him the ABC's. It's so cute. ABC's are very important to Lizzy. When she wakes up in the middle of the night she screams "Mommy! Mommy! ABC's! ABC's!" So a song or two of ABC's quiets her down for the rest of the night.

We keep the DVD's on the top shelf. Lizzy's favorite is Elmo. She's grown tired of Finding Nemo, go figure. I, however, prefer Nemo over Elmo. And SHREK! We loved the 4th one! Actually Morgan and I watched it together when the kids went to sleep. The lights were off and the Christmas tree lights were on. It was quite romantic.

Morgan and I were talking about a few things that we remember from our childhood. I remember that I told some crazy stories. They were completely made up, but I told them anyway. It didn't seem like lying or anything, I was just telling a story. haha.

One time I remember sitting on the bench swing with an adult, I think it was Toni. We were looking at the birds and trees in our neighbor's yard. Toni said, "Are those crows?" I don't know why I decided to do this, but I responded, "No, it's a new kind of bird that they've found. The scientists just discovered it." Of course Toni knew I was full of it, but I had no idea. "Are you sure? They look about the size of crows." Toni was a good sport to play along. "Well, this new bird is about the size of a crow." Why did I completely make this up? Because I really didn't know the answer? So I faked it…? Maybe.

When I was in Mrs. Stine's class I was 6 or 7 years old. There were two other students along with me that were identified as good readers. So we were given chapter books to read from the library. The books were maybe 90 pages long and didn't have many pictures. We were suppose to give oral reports about our books when we were done. So each day during reading time I would open my book and read. I didn't know, however, that you were suppose to continue reading where you left off the last time. So each day I started reading from the very beginning. I didn't know how they expected me to read the entire book, and it wasn't very interesting with no pictures. So I wasn't too excited about this chapter book. Anyways, later on came the day when I was suppose to give my little report about the book. The other 2 kids gave their report and then I stood up in front of the class - everyone was sitting on the floor looking up at me. Quite casually I gave my little book report. My imagination conjured up a story for me and I told the story about some kids playing on the playground with a big beach ball. The beach ball, however, got stolen by some dark stranger. So the kids had to find out who took the ball. In the end the kids found the ball and all was good. I remember the teacher asking me some question and I answered it with no problem. Then I sat down while everyone clapped for me. And I never thought about it again. Nobody else had any idea that I was just blowing hot air. If the teacher knew that I had fudged that report, she never let on. Morgan assures me, however, that the teacher must have known.

I've seen other kids just sort of make up stories. I wasn't trying to be bad or anything, but the story just came out. haha.

Magic

I think it is a bit funny that my Photoshop textbook refers to some of the program's functions as "magic." I wonder what the programmers that spent the last couple years trying to code these healing tools think of that.

Design Fundamentals

My second graphic design class is Design Fundamentals for New Media. I'm almost done with it. These are a few of the projects that I've done. Some I'm a little more proud of than others. I'm definitely getting better with Adobe Illustrator. I've really enjoyed learning how to make cool images. I've learned the most from online tutorials on the Adobe website and other online tutorials, like illustrationclass.com.

This is called "Matter unorganized." I was suppose to create an abstract (non-realistic) image from a realistic image. I used a typical view of the earth from satellite. This one actually has hidden meaning, which was fun to do. That's what abstract design is all about, except the the kind that's not. =) It was fun to create images that have a bit of mystery to them.

"Who will eat the last cookie?" This image lacks balance, so there is a bit of tension. I've really been enjoying oatmeals raisin cookies lately.

This was one I did after doing a bunch of research to make my images more interesting and detailed. I went over and beyond with this one. I was suppose to create an image using 2 vanishing point perspective. I tried to do a transparent cabin showing a Christmas scene. I couldn't get it quite the way I wanted... the Christmas scene looks like it's on top of the cabin rather than inside. But I like how the trees are transparent and you can see the leaves of the trees behind.

This is me working on my assignments! My children are sleeping and and crawling on me. haha! At least they were letting me do my work. Other times I can't even sit down. Notice Jordan going for Elizabeth's hair. He always does this!

Fire Rain. This is a "visual pun" which means that there is something that is used in an unexpected way.

This one is suppose to illustrate a word. I think it's pretty obvious which word. I call this one "Fast Sunday." I made it on Saturday while I was fasting. haha.

This one I was really excited about! At first I was not thrilled about drawing a "person sitting in a chair in perspective" but I was inspired by looking at some very cool images done by other people. I love the effect of using "transparancy." This took all day to make.

This one I drew "freehand" on the computer. I found a tool that smooths out your strokes - when you draw a line with a trackpad it's never smooth.

There are more projects at the link on the right along with family pictures. I'm so happy I'm taking these classes. It has been even more fun that I thought it would be! I get really excited about some of the things I am learning or seeing online.

Lizzy's Snow Adventure

We had quite the snow storm before Halloween! Elizabeth was very excited to go outside. She had her monkey costume on along with lots of other warming articles and she played outside for about 5 minutes before coming back in.

We went to our ward Halloween party. Lizzy pointed to one guy who dressed up and said, "dragon!" I didn't even know that she knew this word. But she does, and she can identify dragon costumes. She uses new words everyday. You tell her what something is called and she doesn't forget. She still doesn't use sentences, but it is awesome how we are able to communicate now.

Here's a better look at her costume. Autumn lent this to us. =) It has a tail, too.

This morning Lizzy woke up insisting that there was an elephant in the garage. She had to stare into the garage for a long time before she was convinced otherwise.

This is me and Lizzy playing with the camera on the laptop. =)

Last night Elizabeth spontaneously took a crayon, pretended to pop it in her mouth, puffed out her cheeks, and pretended to chew on it. It was SOO funny. She learned this from Morgan. Apparently she was on to him because she knew not to really put it in her mouth!!

Lately Lizzy has been trying to pull a trick on us. She'll say "Potty!" which is of course, exciting for us. So she undresses and goes to the bathroom, but then refuses to sit on the toilet… her real motive she informs us was to take a "Shower!" If she had her way, she would probably take 5 baths a day.

Late one evening she tried to pull this trick so we dressed her in her pajamas and put her to bed. It was past her bedtime, anyway. We are trying to train her so that she does not need to have the door guard in her room, so it was off. Maybe 10 minutes after we put her to bed and we thought she was already asleep, she opened the door and announced loudly to a sleeping household, "SHOWER!"

Jordan's Halloween

This is what Jordan wore for Halloween while he was outside. He had an orange onsie with ghosts on it that he wore while inside. This was Elizabeth's 2 years ago.

His little smiles are so sweet! We love when he smiles and laughs.

He is chewing on my water bottle topper. Yesterday he got his first tooth!

Autumn age us this fun toy for Jordan. It's funny that we caught him with this face. Elizabeth makes this face all the time. She will come up to me or Morgan, get really close to our face, make this face, pause for an intense moment, and say a single word, like, "food." or "Elmo."

Another intoxicating smile. I love the little sounds he makes!

Lately he's been doing this funny little trick - he bites on his lower lip. And then sometimes he SMILES while biting it. I realize, of course, that this is no big deal to most people. But I'm his mother and I find this extremely cute and worthy of a picture and blog excerpt.

You'll notice that he has a toothbrush. This is a vibrating toothbrush that we found at Walmart for only 5 dollars. No, we did not buy it for Jordan. We bought it for Elizabeth. And for some reason she's not as possessive of this as she is about her toys, so Jordan enjoys playing with it A LOT.

There are lots more pictures of Jordan at the link on the right.

I caught a lot of these cute smiles in videos. I'll take a video and then take a "snapshot" in picasa of the captured moment.

InDesign Project

Wow! Our last project for my Intro to Design class was to create a newsletter for the SLCC Media and Web Design Department advertising their programs. They had very specific colors, fonts, and logo guidelines to follow. This is what I came up with. I was very happy with how it turned out! I haven't had it checked by any professionals and I've had no feedback, but to my un-trained eye I think it's pretty cool. I'm now starting my second class, Design Principles.

Highlight of General Conference

Very awesome 16 minutes of highlights of the recent General Conference where the Prophet Thomas S. Monson and the 12 Apostles spoke to the world.

http://new.lds.org/general-conference/highlights/october2010?lang=eng

Decorating for fall!

I've been planning on replacing the kitchen valence curtains that came with the house. I found this really cute fabric at Walmart for a decent price. So I made curtains!!!

You know, it's a funny thing that I am EXTREMELY excited about these curtains. There are a few things that I get excited about, and this has to be one of the highlights of the last several months. HOW EXCITING! I think that this is just further proof that I am female - because these home made curtains are just so intensely exhilarating!

We also pulled out our two pieces of decorative fall decor, a pot and a wreath bought 2 years ago at an out-of-season sale. I completely forgot to put them out last year. So this is the first time that these 2 year old objects are being displayed:

We also need some new hotpads. We killed one of ours. We didn't have a "mallet" to hammer together a metal shelf so we used a hammer and a hot pad. The hot pad, however, did not survive the beating. It was hammered into shreds. Who would have known? So I am going to get some fall-themed hot pads and hang them up in the kitchen somewhere to make it pretty.

I know this means that I will have to decorate again when the seasons change. These curtains, however, were very cheap. $17. And sets of hot pads and kitchen towels are $5 at Walmart. I think it's worth it!

Conference

My dad taught Elizabeth how to say "turtle." My parents came with the kids and me to Jordan's two week doctor appointment. There is an aquarium in the waiting room and there are 2 little turtles that live there! They have red eyes and are about 4 inches long. My dad picked Lizzy up to show her one of the turtles and told her what it was. So Elizabeth got very excited about turtles, and suddenly started seeing them everywhere! What an exciting world. She also knows how to say airplane. Our new house seems to be exactly below the route that airplanes take to get to the Salt Lake airport just north of here. So after teaching Lizzy what an airplane was, she started hollering every time one came within hearing range (every 5 minutes if we are outside). It started out sounding like "AMY!" Then later, "EMMIE!" Then later "EM AINE!" then "AH PLANE" and finally to "AIRPLANE." Our sweet little articulate daughter. =)

Sometimes Elizabeth is being WAY too noisy. So we say, "Shh!" Her lack of response, however, would lead you to believe that she doesn't know what that means. However I have substantial proof that she very well DOES know what that means. Jordan was being noisy one day and Lizzy goes up to him and says, "Shh!" Today I was sewing downstairs with both of the kids with me. This was made possible because Elizabeth was watching Sesame Street on the laptop next to me. I turned the movie on quite loud so that she could still hear it even when I was using the sewing machine. But apparently that wasn't sufficient because while I was sewing she kept grabbing my shoulder and saying, "Shh!"

This is a hat that Aimee gave us. Oh my! I could not resist putting up a nice blackmail picture. haha!

A couple neighbors and I have been doing playgroup once a week. This week it was at our house. I put a bag of saltine crackers on the counter but one of the older kids got ahold of it. We walked into the kitchen to find the kids huddled together picking at the bag of crackers. All these 3 kids are 2 years old. By the time I got the camera the 3 year old and 4 year old had jumped away from the scene.

This is General Conference at the Clement's house:

Illustrator Project

I have finished the introduction to Adobe Illustrator section of my graphic design class. I am so pleased with how this turned out! The assignment was to design a logo and window display for a fictitious restaurant called "Monkey Tree." There were a bunch of things we had to include, such as a gradient, text, a mask, and an illustration. If you look close you can see that the sky behind the words is a bit lighter. The sand, large words, tree trunk and coconut have a gradient (colors fading into each other).

Prophet Thomas S. Monson - Charity, the Pure Love of Christ

The Prophet, our beloved Thomas S. Monson is one of the most compassionate speakers ever. He speaks with so much love - an awesome "grandpa like" quality. =) Today he mentioned that he is "a man of memories." I must agree!

So what did the Lord want us women to learn today? President Monson admonished us NOT TO JUDGE OTHERS. He reminded us that we do not know the hearts of others and appearances can be deceiving. He reminded us that Jesus taught "Love one another as I have loved you."

He told a great story about a woman who critically commented that her neighbor's laundry was always dirty. But one day the woman exclaimed that the neighbor's laundry was clean for once! Her husband pointed out that earlier that morning he had cleaned the windows.

Charity is the pure love of Christ, as we learn in the scriptures. President Monson taught that charity is the opposite of criticism.

What a great session. I learn so much from President Monson's stories. I feel so privileged to hear our Prophet speak! The session will be posted soon on www.lds.org.

General Conference NEXT WEEK! We will get to hear from our Prophet, the Apostles and other Church leaders!

Spiders

This is a bit embarrassing and I admit a bit funny. Yesterday while I was in the bathroom I saw a BIG spider sitting on the wall next to the tub. To say the least I was FREAKED out. It was too big to just let free. It was in our master bathroom, so if it got away it would be hidden somewhere in our bathroom or our bedroom. That just couldn't happen.

So I called Morgan to come home an hour early from work. He said that he really couldn't. SO I called the Preventative Pest Control people that sprayed our house a week ago for bugs. Their closest guy was far away from us, so that wasn't much of an option considering that the spider could run away by then. This whole time I was counting on the spider not moving.

So I called the Peterson's house a few doors down from us. Sister Peterson picked up and I told her I was having a bit of an emergency. "How do you feel about killing spiders?" She was a bit hesitant so I asked if there happened to be anyone in her house that could rescue me and my children from the impossibly big spider in my bathroom. There are a few people that work in their house daily on their family-owned newspaper. So Brother McKabe was called to do the job. He came over and found me with a wad of paper towels and a shoe. He had this grin on his face the whole time. I showed him the culprit and I walked out of the room covering my eyes. Just a second later the toilet flushed and he came back out, still with that grin on his face. He went back to work and I was again alone with my whole body still trembling.

I grew up in Southern California, went on a mission to Bolivia, served in Bermejo which is in the middle of jungle. I assure you that I am no stranger to roaches, spiders, insects of all kinds, possums, mice, etc. I've even seen a few tarantulas terrifyingly up close. My mission apartment was once attacked by a large Bermejoan bug, like a giant flying roach the size of a rat. But I can't stand any of them.

Once while we were living in Provo I had another similar emergency. I was pregnant with Lizzy and Morgan was at school. I had just got out of the shower and walked into the bedroom to be greeted by a huge bold black spider just above the dresser where I did my make-up and morning prep. It twitched at my entering the room. It terrified me. I called my downstairs neighbor Cami and asked, "Is your husband home?" She said that no he wasn't, but what was wrong? I told her about the spider and started bawling like a baby - no, I mean like a pregnant lady. So she told me that she would come up. I called Linda McCleary who lived across the street and she came over. This was when Isabelle was small, so when she came over I took little Isabelle in my arms and sat trembling in the living room while Cami and Linda dealt with the spider. I heard bumping and crashing in the bedroom until they finally came out having done the deed. Cami affirmed that the spider was "aggressive" considering that he twitched each time somebody spoke or took a step toward him. Cami was rather excited about the strange exotic spider and put it in a baggie to show to another guy in our ward that studied insects. Later he tried to identify the spider by counting the number of eyes. Unfortunately that was unsuccessful because the eyes had been smashed, he explained. Oh my gosh.

If I had to do it all over again… I would still have sat trembling in the living room while somebody else dealt with it in the bedroom.

We had these funny little light red spiders in our house when we first moved here. The pest control guy mentioned that those might be brown recluse - an aggressive deadly spider. I was quite bothered by this so I tried to go online and identify the spider and the type. I found the images incredibly creepy and couldn't continue with my search because I felt like they were all crawling over my body. After a few attempts I found that there are other red spiders besides brown recluse. I hope to NEVER need to identify a spider again.

Silly Sissy

Lizzy calls herself Sissy. She says everyone else's name just fine, and she can recognize Emily, Emmie and Katie by their pictures.

Morgan and Doug from our ward were changing the break pads on our car. Lizzy got greasy somehow.

One morning when Morgan and I were still asleep Lizzy came in and took out the drawers of the jewelry amour (I had already taken my jewelry and make up out and relocated them). Then she climbed into the amour and shut the door on herself. Hearing no more sound, I opened my eyes to look for her and didn't realize where she was until I saw the amour door OPEN. Woah.

This is a chunk of bread that has been stabbed several times with a screwdriver, and now is being suspended by a Phillips.

Here's Katie on her 16th birthday. She has a half-sphere cake decorated with a PEACE sign! Lizzy recognizes some letters like W and O and now the peace sign. Katie taught her that, of course. One grungy day I put my tie-dyed Crab Shack t-shirt on. After one quick look at my outfit Lizzy declared "PEACE!"

Sometimes there are no words to describe what I am feeling.

Lizzy and Jordan

Jordan is 4 months old now! He's starting to grab things with his hands. He gets frustrated when he drops his toys, but he is getting better. He's also sleeping through the night… What else could a parent ask for?

This photo is reversed, Jordan and our kitchen are actually on my left. This is actually a picture to show my good hair day and my birthday jewelry from Jessie:

Jordan can scare Elizabeth by crying and Lizzy can terrify Jordan by bouncing him "gently" (ie violently) in the bouncer.

Jordan has bright blue eyes. Surprise! And guess what… We learned that blue eyes are NOT recessive. Just ask wikipedia!

This is the belly button check. Lizzy knows where EVERYONE's belly button is. Mommy, Daddy, Jordan, Katie, probably all her babysitters, and you - if you get within searching range.

Haha:

Lizzy and Jordan get along well. This is Lizzy's bed at bedtime. We pretended like we were going to leave Jordan in the room with her and she didn't react at all! Jordan didn't either.

Totally on accident: (Very little reaction from Jordan)