Jordan playing in a box

This is Jordan at the Discovery Science Museum. These balls bounce all around! So fun.

Jordan playing in a box.

Lizzy's Cooking Skills

Lizzy likes to help me cook. Here she is helping me make chicken pot pie.

Usually it's Lizzy's job to stir. This day she wanted to help me cook, but I had already done the cooking for the day! So I gave her something else to stir. It's cereal. We also couldn't find her little apron, so she is wearing a bib as a substitute. I don't have a picture of her apron here, but there's one of it hanging on the Christmas tree in a previous post.

Speaking of cooking I would like to share an awesome discovery! I saw this bacon at Walmart and decided to try it out. I think I will never buy regular packages of bacon again! This has packages of 4 strips of bacon and a paper towel in a sealed plastic bag. You put the package in the microwave and you get your nice pieces of cooked bacon!

There are so many PRO's to this bacon package.

1. You don't have to touch or peal the slimy uncooked bacon.

2. You don't have to open the entire pound of bacon at once.

3. You don't have to decide what to do with the REST of that pound of bacon after you have cooked those few strips that you need.

4. You don't have find another way to bag up the REST of that pound of bacon so you don't have an open package of bacon in the fridge.

5. You don't have to decide if you are going to cook it on the stove top - which seems like a nicer way than just microwaving it, but then your house doesn't get all smokey! And I like the smell of bacon, so the house smelling like bacon is okay, but I don't like the greasy smell. yuck.

6. You can cook just 4 pieces at a time. Just enough for 2 BLT's.

7. No slimy hot dishes to clean up. (You just throw away the plastic that you cook it in.)

8. No slimy microwave to scrub.

It costs about $6, when the normal bacon costs $3-$4. If you value each "pro" above as $0.25, then you come out even. =)

We finally converted Lizzy's room from a boy's room to a girl's room.

The Zebra and the Giraffe

At church this week, right after the Sacrament was passed, Lizzy looked at me and asked for "mayonnaise?"

Sometimes when she's hungry she'll say, "Mayonnaise? Bread? Meat?" Her little priorities are a bit out of order.

Lizzy likes to jump on this spare twin bed that we have in her room. Jordan likes to watch her.

Lizzy and I made this necklace with beads from JoAnn's.

This giraffe and zebra from Jessie's family are Lizzy's little pals. She takes them around with her, she sleeps with them, and here she is reading to them.

They also show up on my kitchen counter sometimes.

Sometimes she accidentally puts them in the SINK. The zebra had a near death experience yesterday, actually. Rather than being dropped into the sink, he was thrown up on top of the halogen lamp and got a bit singed. He has a bad little ulcer now, but he's still fun to play with. This morning, in fact, he was dancing with Lizzy.

This is Lizzy pelting the missionaries with bean bags. This is a "fun" game that Daddy taught her.

I had some nice church music playing and Lizzy started dancing. It was so cute!

We locked the kids in the living room while we were cutting Morgan's hair. It's funny how they gravitate to wherever we are, even if we are doing NOTHING and we are on the opposite side of the house as their TOYS.

Vaseline vs. Peanut Butter

I walked into the living room and found Lizzy with the vaseline jar. It was all over her hands, clothes, hair, and couch. I could not believe my eyes. (This is a picture from another episode.)

Morgan washed her hair TWICE with normal baby shampoo. I think this achieved nothing but distributing the vaseline evenly throughout her hair.

I washed her hair for the third time that night with hand soap. Her hair still felt slimy and looked like it was wet.

The next morning I looked online and decided to try peanut butter. After a few goops I realized that crunchy peanut butter wasn't going to work. Elizabeth didn't appreciate the exfoliating property.

Luckily the missionaries had some creamy peanut butter, so we continued the fourth washing. It helped a little bit.

That night I did another peanut butter wash, but I was much more generous with the peanut butter. =) This fifth washing worked pretty well.

We followed up with a sixth washing - normal shampoo - careful not to get it in her eyes. This time her hair turned out rather normal looking… normal as in "not washed after a dose of yogurt" normal.

Lizzy hates getting her hair washed. But after the seventh wash with normal baby shampoo she was nice and clean. If you don't count the yogurt, that is.

Happy Valentine's

Here are some more projects from my Photoshop class.

The point of this one is to use "masks." The pictures are masked - meaning they are "covered up" in some spots.

I made this "S" by following a tutorial that someone wrote online. VERY cool.

I loved doing that "S" tutorial so I decided to do one of my own. I love how the letters are shining!

I made this poster for a poster contest. The winning poster would be displayed at the college. I don't think I won, though, because they haven't contacted me. There were a ton of entries.

This was a really simple one but I like it.

I really like this one! I call it "Apple Sauce." Lizzy and a friend are exploring our kitchen counter. I even edited the toaster oven so it doesn't look as stained as it really is.

Will Baby Jordan Please Stand Up

Jordan is officially standing. Wow. This is the new love of his life. He doesn't care about toys anymore. He just wants to stand up. He stands up in his crib now. He can reach the door knob, too!

Jordan is a whole head taller than Lizzy was at this age. In fact, Morgan says that he is only 4 or 5 inches shorter than Lizzy right now. Lizzy is 20 months older than Jordan. Jordan is taller than his baby gate. Shesh!

We fixed a few holes on our walls. This is Lizzy helping all on her own.

A lady in our ward came by to give me a little "welcome to the committee" chocolate truffle box. I put it on the counter - one of the few places where it is safe. I was excited to enjoy them later. I then proceeded to make dinner. After just a little bit that alarm in my head started blaring, "It's too quiet! Imminent disaster! Warning! Warning!" So I walked around the counter and found this:

Remember the good old days when Lizzy couldn't reach the counter? Or push the chair over so she could reach what was in the middle of the counter?

We read a verse from the Book of Mormon with Elizabeth every night as part of the bed time routine. The idea is that she repeats what we say. One night Morgan started, "And it came to pass…" Then Lizzy sweetly repeated, "Poopy pants…"

She is starting to play "mommy" with Jordan. When Jordan was sitting in the high chair a few days ago Lizzy asked him, "Want food?" without waiting for an answer she said, "okay." She walked to the cupboard, turned back and said, "Juice? okay." After she opened the cupboard she found a can of apple sauce. She turned to Jordan, "Want apple sauce? okay."

Lizzy has some yucky cough medicine that the doctor gave her. She won't take it because she knows it's disgusting, I'm sure. So we devised a plan. We offer her a little bowl of marshmallows and she is more than willing to take her medicine. It wouldn't be worth it to me. Maybe if you offered me a brownie… =)

When The Children Are Asleep I'll Dream With You

First: Project Assemble Desk

When we first got married we had this ugly little wood desk that we used to put the computer on. Pretty soon we upgraded to a half card table. Here is a picture from last October with our handy little faithful computer desk:

We liked that card table desk especially because Morgan and I could sit next to each other and do homework. Now that our two children also like to sit next to us and our table cannot accommodate all of the computer equipment (ie: Morgan's work laptop with essential second monitor and my school laptop and our printer) we saw that it was needful to acquire a larger desk. Yes we are a techie computer family.

So I researched and browsed for weeks and finally found the best deal for a gorgeous home office set. We had to assemble every little part of the desk, which I think accounted for the fantastic low price. After the kids went to sleep Morgan and I would pull out a box and start a major assembly project. There were 6 boxes. It took Morgan and I about 15 hours (30 total!) over several days to assemble the entire thing. Here is Morgan working on our lateral file. I was helping too, just taking a picture at the moment. =P

I still do not have a picture of our desk all set up because this room is in a bit of disarray. So here is a picture of what it looks like. I especially like the round corners and the storage space in the hutch. We keep all of the crayons up there.

Next: Project Flush the Fish

One of the rooms in our basement had a wallpaper border of TROUT when we moved in. It was one of those things that just yelled "REPLACE ME!" We found out, however, that removing wallpaper is EXTREMELY tedious and time consuming. And unfortunately the entire bottom half of the wall had wallpaper that also had to be removed. We didn't finish removing it all before the missionaries moved in to our basement. So they were studying in that room with half ripped down wallpaper, so we had to halt the removal. Just a couple weeks ago, though, the missionaries decided to do service for us and they removed all the wallpaper for us. They moved their study desks into the play room. (Occasionally we would hear a ball bounce or a toy piano chime during study time.)

This is the picture of the same fish wallpaper border that is still in the downstairs bathroom. These fish will just have to swim around for a while longer.

Apparently after you remove wallpaper it isn't necessarily all "removed." There were tiny impossible spots along with gashes and other blemishes all over the dry wall. Not a pretty room. So we needed to get it fixed. We had to hire someone to come do a few really bad fixes for us. Then we went to get primer and paint and all those essential painting tools. I never intended on spending money doing this… I just intended on making the fishy room inhabitable. Obviously I didn't use any foresight starting this project that wasn't really suppose to be a project in the first place.

We ended up leaving the top half of the wall the same pretty marble white and painting the bottom half olive green. We found a pretty wallpaper border that would blend the two. After a overcoming a few catastrophes this is how the room turned out. Not too bad. Don't be fooled… it wasn't this nice and pretty the whole time.

I looked at hundreds of wallpaper borders and I fell in love with this one:

Little did our sweet sleeping children know. Yes, I think Lizzy is picking her nose.

Next: Project Pink Beads

They don't have very many clocks in our church building, and that drives me crazy! So I made this watch. I'm so happy with how it turned out! It's super pretty. And if you are considering making a watch like this because you think it will be cheaper than buying one already made - think again.