tonight, tonight

ok it's 3:47 am.
I can't sleep.
I've been having this problem for a while and I'm sure everyone goes through days where they work their butts off and still can't sleep.
Tonight I've got thoughts in my brain so I'm blogging.

I've got catch-up to do. I've started, but here we are.
I've come back to blogging cuz I do a lot of fun stuff with my kid. And I can't really share all of it in social media.

For example-
I have a weekly activity schedule:
Make Something Monday.
Tactile Tuesday.
Wander someWhere Wednesday. oh, and I'm about to change that to Workout Wednesday!
Think Theme Thursday.
Fun and Friendly Friday. Gonna be Fun or Field Trip Friday!

every other Thursday morning we go to the library.
thinking about putting him in a 'toddler gym' on wednesdays.
we try to go outside every day. sometimes it actually happens.

but seriously- I attempt to do an activity a day with him. Today we did leaves. We took like...3 walks with his bucket and gathered leaves, then they went in his 'sensory tub' (that WILL become a sensory table someday!) and he played in them on the patio. Because the landscapers clear away leaves pretty quickly here (white people problems, I know!) I wasn't sure we'd get enough, and there's NEVER enough for a real 'jump in the leaf pile' pile, but it worked out ok. He climbed into that bin on his own and it was so cute.
We have a lot of fun on tactile days because it's like 'here- play with corn kernels? how do they feel? can you scoop them? etc' or 'MOON SAND' or baths. or messy things in the bathtub, then a bath.

But it's my make something Mondays that are...cool. I craft or we craft. OR BOTH on a very fantastic Monday.
    This fantastic monday we made a fall tree on the wall. I cut the branches off the brown construction paper to make the trunk. They all got taped up. Then I cut the shape of the contact paper, peeled the corners and taped it up. Added tape to secure. Then Gid and I ripped up red, orange, and yellow tissue paper and put it in his bucket. Then he had tons of fun playing in the paper 'leaves' and scrunching them, and throwing them, and sticking them on the beautiful tree.

    I also finished a project I'll give him for christmas- jean roads. I cut up old jeans that we were getting rid of anyway, and shaped them into 'road' pieces. Some straight, some curvy, a few 'turns' and intersections. Well this monday I finally painted the yellow lines to make them look like roads. Excited to see him drive his cars on them for christmas.

Then there's the cleaning list:
I got THIS frame from ikea. Then I made my list on a day-to-day basis and printed them at Costco, put in flip frame and use dry-erase to check them off. Maybe someday I'll actually post the lists, yeah?

ok now it's 4:12 and the baby is up. so chris is up. so he's all 'why are you awake'? my favorite is 'just lay in the dark if you have to. eventually your brain will turn off, right?' maybe. more likely i'll get up and clean the bathroom like I didn't get a chance yesterday. or pull the laundry out of the dryer. or design j's shirts. or write on my calendar for the activities for this and next week. maybe decide what thank yous gid and i should make for thanksgiving and christmas. oh look, i missed the last few 'i's. time to give up. and try laying in the dark before I get back to mommin'.

Best part- while not 'super-happy constant ecstatic' like when i was preggo, each day I'm happy. even sad days really aren't that bad because, I'm a MOM. Livin' the dream. And Gid is ridiculously nice to me, even when he's a handful, just like he should be at almost 2. goodness he's 4 months away from turning 2. I already miss 'baby' Gid, and soon he'll be done being a toddler. I'll just keep Enjoy[ing] Today, every day, and make the most of it.

so tonight, tonight I guess it's time I sleep. I'll post those started catch-up posts soon, yeah?

HOLY GUACAMOLE it's been 4 YEARS!

So, guess what friends? It's been over 4 years since I've updated. Remember how I used to do those cute little catch-up posts? Yeah... so I'm gonna have to do a few, but keep in mind it's been 4 years, so you're NOT getting anything comprehensive. I may end up checking my other socials for help in what I should quick write.

Here's the OVERVIEW:

2012- happy married life. bought a condo. moved in.
2013- happy married life. trying to have a baby isn't going well.
2014- happy married life. surgery for endometriosis. fertility treatment. got pregnant! best pregnancy ever and I'm the happiest I've ever been!
2015- happy married life(see a trend?).  Feb baby boy born! I'm a mom. (now there's a good excuse for why this blog isn't being written.) MomLife.
2016- happy family life. Gid turns one.

boom! see. life in a nutshell. here's what I intend to post:

-4 Years of Vacations/Travel
-Our Home
-I'm Crafty!
-Our Baby Story
-#OurKidGid
-#CraftyCostumes or Adorkable Dress-up!
-tonight, tonight

New Camera

This itty-bitty post is just to inform the world of my excitement over purchasing a new camera! Now we can take pictures of everything! Here are a few pics from the first night we got it, and one from today when I was  looking and feeling all cute and domestic!

Wonderful Weekend

This could be several posts, but -excepting the last day- I'm going to quickly smoosh them all together just 'cuz I feel like it! Anywho...

So this last weekend was pretty wonderful.

It began on Friday, where, for work, I got to work a short shift and  help take the kids to the BYU planetarium. I'd never been to their planetarium, but the presenter did a good job and more importantly, my class was soooo good! They were the best behaved children in there! Granted, there were not good parts (poor Jessica had to deal with a puker and a child who literally peed on her) but overall, getting to go with to the planetarium was pretty exciting! Then I got to clean up and get stuff done as quickly as I could, then go home! I got to hang out at home, get in some web surfing, facebook, pinterest time and then went to chill at my sisters' to go to the mall with J. It was good I took her with me due to the whole 'I'm color deficient' and almost brought home blue pants when the whole reason I went was to get a pair of black and a pair of red!
I then came home to my darling hubby and got to watch some tv before we went to meet up with Brett and Jessa for some Heavy Gear!

Saturday was awesome. Chris and I slept in, got ready for the day, and went to pick up some new pretty orange dice for me! Yay new dice! Then we went and got his niece Chelsea and painted nails with my exciting new del sol color changing nail polish that Chris got for me during our trip to Moab! (I'll post about this later today when I can get the pics from my mommy.) Then we went to THE OREM SUMMERFEST! Now, you need to know that I love love love the summerfest. It's one of my absolute favorite summer things! I love the booths, the food, the carnival, the parade, and most importantly the fireworks. Last year, my wedding was on summerfest and it was a huge scheduling bummer, but Chris still took me to the fireworks! Well, this year we went and enjoyed the booths and food, then went to my friend Tyler's welcome-home-from-his-mission-open-house-party until we had to boogie back to the parade. Which was a blast. Chris got to see why parades are fun with me: I'm LOUD. (A trait I definitely got from my father!) We got to meet Dan (who it appears we may be voting for after all.) and have some fun interactions with people on floats and in the parade. Then we went back to the carnival (So I could get my airbrush tattoo :) and some hot chocolate) and then we watched fireworks!!!

Sunday we went to church at our home ward, which is always fun. We get to see people we know and people who know us. hehe. Then we had smoothie sunday and played with family and friends (I love running into Callie Jo!) and then we headed up to Salt Lake to begin our Anniversary Adventure at the Anniversary Inn. We had an amazing anniversary....that you'll get to hear about in the next post! hehehe.

May

May has been a fun adventure. We had preschool graduation and I found out that I had and took meds to get over bronchitis and a sinus infection. But mostly the things in my brain have been:

1. RPGs: Chris is a game master of legend. He taught me that even though it's not just 'let's play pretend' (which I love), role-playing is a lot of fun! Making a character and playing through a story is....fabulous. We have two campaigns right now:


1. Dirge of the Dragon: Chris' made this vampire the requiem story because J and I love vampires, and after watching vampire diaries of his own free will (I didn't even suggest it to him, just watch with my sisters) he was in a vampire mood. When J and I didn't hop on the rpg band-wagon fast enough he opened up the story to his brothers and friends which became Dave, Brett, Jessa, Dan, and Robbie. Got big fast. Then J and I started playing (from a very different place and time) and it's been interesting. Sadly, many players weren't able to come to sessions and it started to die... but some of us wanted to play all the time (I was so into it already, I bought new matching d10s, I made a binder to keep track of all the character sheets and copies (so we always have them) was taking notes of the campaign as it occured for the adventure log, found pics of all the npcs, kept track of all the pictures of each character as well as their backstory...etc etc) so Chris made a new game for me and Jessa (and Brett came along for the ride)
2. Not Yet Titled: This heavy gear game is still untitled, but I'm obsessed with it already! I get to play "Lil" short for Lilyanne, a 15 yr old engineer. I loved creating her! We're a band of badlander pirates? kinda? We're like...marauders? I'm not entirely sure how to describe us. hahaha. Jessa plays Dallas- the trigger happy, smoking hot, bada... 28 yr old (picture Milla Jovovich in the deserty Resident Evil...) and Brett's Winston, the jack of all trades who completes our little band.. We've only played 2 long sessions, but I love our characters. Here are my two favorite pics of my character: (I don't own these, just found them on the internets, yay deviantart)      and  
2. My Book!: Instead of blogging like I kept meaning to this past month, I wrote a 100 page book! It's a resource book of summer activities for kids! I called it (not super imaginative, but whatever) Emily's Epic Summer Book (subtitled: Fun Activities For Children). It's been a HUGE project, but now that it's done (minus proofreading and a few changes and edits here and there) I don't have to plan lessons for the summer ever again! YAY!
3. Web-shows!: Oh! I've fallen in love with geekandsundry.com and prettydarnfunny.com. When Felicia Day said she was 100 blacksmithing in Skyrim (just like me!) on the Flog, I practically exploded from happiness! "Do you have any ingots?" HAHAHA! And the Steampunk dress up day...I WANT!

Now I find myself in summer schedule for work(less hours woohoo, and in the afternoon so I get to see my hubby more), with free time due to not needing to plan lessons, and excited to use our pass of all passes, go to the pool, play with my honey, go on vacations, see my friend Tyler who's coming home from his mission next week, go to Moab, enjoy more web-shows, and play lots of stories (yay stories!)! Here we go summer! :D I'm just going to relax and enjoy all the... joy!!!

Decorating

So, if you've ever seen my mom's blog, or for that matter, her home, you know that I was raised to decorate for holidays! Now that I have my own home to make nice for my husband, it's exciting to decorate - especially because he gets so excited with the decorating ideas I put together. Mom has been really encouraging me to take pics, so!

Here we go! January's decorations!

   

     

   

 

Table, on top of tv was snowy, door, mantel, and on the back of the cupboards was decorated!

Here's February

Mantel and Table

Here's March

 

   

Here's the mantel, door, and table

And come April and now May... the camera hates me and crapped out! 

:( 

My Birthday!

   This year was probably my best birthday I can remember!
   First, Chris took me to Celtic Woman.
   The Sunday beforehand we got to have a 'joint birthday dinner' with Matt and Tam and the boys (Matt and I share a birthday) that was a lot of fun.
   Then work on my birthday was actually pretty good. Lots of 'friends' to say HAPPY BIRTHDAY. hehe. And of course I took treats and taught them to sign the happy birthday song, then also taught them to sing what they call 'Miss Emily's Special Birthday Song' - the Los Hermanos birthday song. That night, Chris got off work early (Thanks Russell for switching shifts!) and we got all pretty (Chris was handsome...) and went to eat at the Olive Garden, then he took me to see Hunger Games which was pretty good.
   Then, that Saturday we had a DISNEY DAY! We slept in. We listened to Disney music and watched Disney movies, and most importantly played DISNEY SCENE-IT! My favorite game that, so far, I've never lost! Of course, people don't usually play with me because of the whole 'never lose' thing, but my sisters (and now my darling husband as well) make a special effort to play (and not be upset when I cream them) on my birthday! Lots of people helped make it wonderful! Brett and Jessa, Callie Jo, Mom, Ken, My three wonderful sisters: J, B, and K, and of course Chris!
   Then, a week or so later, we got to go to Los Hermanos with the family for my birthday song and lunch! That was awesome. I also got more birthday presents! 4 elephant necklaces this birthday=very good birthday. Have I mentioned I love elephants? hehehe.
   So yeah...epic birthday win!

Celtic Woman

Celtic Woman is a huge favorite of mine! I love their clear, beautiful, angelic voices! Their music is some of my favorites for naptime, sundays, St. Patties day, Christmas, and just for me time. Chris liked them ok, but knew that I LOVE them. On St. Patrick's Day he told me he'd gotten tickets to take me to see them the week before my birthday! Can I just say WAAAHOOO! BEST HUSBAND AWARD GRANTED! Come the day of the concert I was sick... but Chris said 'I'll carry you if I have to, you're going to see them sing!' (Did I get lucky or what?!) So we went and he helped me walk around, he got me a souvenir program, and we found our seats. In the first row of the stands. We were SO close. I wish the picture can do it justice. And boy did they sing! Sang like angels! It was so uplifting and fun. Chris was...enthralled. Now he understood how much I love them. The way they move in their fancy formal dresses, the way the musicians are part of the fun playing along, the way the violinist Mairead dances along, the lights the music...ah! I was...blown away. And anyone who knows me knows I'm not often blown away. Not a note off, not a bad vowel, not a icky sound, just...angelic perfection! (From the two who've been with celtic woman a while. The newest girl who's first tour this was [as she filled in for my favorite who stayed in Ireland] wasn't perfect, but she did well...she tried) At one point, I swear I could have touched Chloe Agnew (my favorite who did come) as she came off the stage and right by where we sat! It was...supercalifragilisticexpialidocious! Here's the pic Chris took with his phone:

Easter!

This was our first Easter as a married couple. Oh I wish I had pics for you, but sadly, my camera has passed on. I love holidays, in case you haven't figured that out, and so this Easter we figured out how we like to do it. Mostly that meant 'this is how I like Easter' since he didn't really have a lot of things he wanted besides painting eggs (surprisingly, the thing I could do without. But we did it, he said he wanted to, we did it!) We almost made tomb cookies (but fell asleep before we did. haha). We did hide eggs for each other, got each other baskets and our Easter Outfits, and visited family. I made deviled eggs. It was good. We'll have to doll up again and post pics later of our Easter clothes. (don't hold your breath. we get cute and matchy a lot and we're more likely to take pics of new outfits!)