Preston Is Here!

Found Zara completely knocked out after Young Women's on Sunday, she is looking so big. After church we went to the Airport to pick up Preston! Yay, a visitor! Zara was super happy to have a back seat companion. 

A little Sunday dinner outside.

On Monday Preston turned 19, Happy Birthday Preston! 

Preston thought that an ice cream cake would be nice so we got to work, aka searched on Pinterest until we found an acceptable recipe. Preston is such a natural in the kitchen, it's really fun cooking with him. We had never made an ice cream cake before but we all thought it turned out really yummy.

After dinner we went bowling, so fun! Wow, these guys are really good bowlers, they left me in the dust. 

Yesterday we headed downtown to see some of Broadway and soak up the sights, literally, we left the house with a little drizzle here and there and ended up downtown in a rainstorm. But, alas, we are Oregonians at heart and a little rain never scared us, at least it wasn't cold. Look, Preston didn't even have a hood on his jacket. I think almost every time we have taken people downtown it has been raining...

Zara says: Hmmmm, what candy should I get from the candy bar? 

Why, Yes! I will take the largest peanut butter cup I have ever seen!

Happy Birthday my little bigger brother! I hope you have a great 19th year! Love you!

Weekend Fun: Splash Pad with Dad!

Random Fun Times in July

This post is dedicated to all the random fun times we had in July. Thanks July, you were a little hot and humid and a whole lot of fun! 

 The little park by our house and a great summer concert series for kiddos. We would have gone even if we didn't have Zara though, actually sometimes it felt that way because she slept through every single performance.

FaceTime with Mom and Grandpa and Grandma Shutt.....and Christopher, their really funny dog.

This is Zara's latest face. She sucks in her bottom lip and looks like a little grandma, we call it "I lost my dentures".

We set up her highchair and she likes to sit in at the table while we eat our dinner.  

Waiting to FaceTime Grandma, Zara has figured out that she is on the screen while we are waiting for the other party to answer and she thinks it is the best thing ever. 

Hanging out with Millie, her friend from church who is 2 weeks older then her. They were only supposed to be 5 days apart....but Zara was running a little late.

Hanging out with Mom and Dad.

Look at that cute little tongue! Dusty decided to take a trip in the Telephone box, so random!

Standing alone for just a second, I can't wait till she can walk around! We went swimming with the Young Women in our ward and had so much fun!

Our first date out, we went to watch one of our friends play at a spot downtown.

Again, watching herself while we are waiting to FaceTime someone.

A Little Funk

Ah man, today started out with a bad case of the Wednesdays. Anybody else? I have this theory that the universe sort of has a way of dishing out a lot of the same stuff at the same time. For example, I will be talking to one of my friends about how Zara didn't sleep or how weird a day is going for me and she will say, "Me too!". Hence the "universe theory" that sometimes we all experience the same kind of day at the same time. 

Anyhow... today was one of those days where I was feeling overwhelmed with even the thought of cleaning my house, doing dishes and finishing four loads of laundry. Zara fell asleep so I had lunch and watched a silly show about quintuplets on TLC because I was too lazy to change the channel. 

Hello, first world problem!

 I might also be a little sleep deprived because the past few nights Zara has woken up around 10:30, right when we are trying to go to bed, all smiley like, "hey guys! I just woke up from my nap and I am so happy, lets play". It's sort of cute and exhausting all at the same time.

This morning we did manage to make it out of the house to go to the library to pick up some books I had put on hold. We happened to be there during story time which was awesome! There is a lady that reads stories and sings songs with the kids, I imagine it's pretty similar to everyone else's story time now that I think about it. There were even a few other moms from our ward there. Afterwords I was browsing around a little bit looking for a cookbook about how to make sushi when I ran into this little gem, Handmade Living. I love when you find a good book that you literally pull out of stacks. I didn't even open it to check it out, talk about good marketing. 

Back to my lunch in front of TLC, after I finished my sandwich I decided to take everyone up on their advice and nap while my baby was napping. I told myself I can clean next week (I usually clean on Mondays...it's Wednesday so I am already off my schedule...) I grabbed this pretty book to fall asleep too and headed upstairs to my bed, shoved the unfolded two loads of laundry to Dusty's side of the bed and crawled in under the covers. I am usually weary of design books, too many pictures of spaces that are stuffed to the brim with too much crap that is too expensive and flipping through 150 pages of living rooms gets old after awhile, even for an interior designer. 

I opened the book and was immediately sucked in, it was all about this textile designers home and her Scandinavian lifestyle (think ikea), it was a little window into her life. It was so great, good balance of pictures and words on the pages. I read the whole thing in about 30 minutes. She shares things like, if you want pretty dishcloths just make a stencil and paint some, or make a mobile out of paper for decoration, or use contact paper to make something prettier. After, I was so jazzed up about jazzing up my home that I went and did the dishes! What?! Wednesday funk take that! Now I am all inspired to do things like paint my pantry and blah blah blah. It's so great. 

She also shared some recipes from her Swedish childhood like cinnamon buns that we actually ate while we were in Sweden, yummy.

I think sometimes I get so hung up on matching things and making sure things are "perfect" that it freezes me up so much that I don't do anything to my home. It's easier to say, "oh ya, that horrible paint job is from the last people that lived here". I liked this book because she just puts everything she loves together and it works out. One time while growing up I painted a pattern on my bedroom wall just cause I felt like it, another time I painted an imitation Van Gogh on the back of my sisters bedroom door (where else do you paint something without your parents permission and where you are pretty sure they won't see it for a long time?) I miss doing stuff like that. 

So now I am all inspired to let my inner crafty self out. Watch out people! 

I might start sharing some handmade projects inspired by the book, be prepared to see some nooks and crannies of my home that you have never seen before.

This whole experience has made me grateful for two things, libraries, and being able to read. The other day we were at Mckay (used books) and I wanted to buy some new cook books but they were still sort of spendy. It's amazing for being a library volunteer how often I forget that you can get FREE books from the library ANYTIME you want! Pretty cool.

A Mango Sprout!

Did you know that you can plant a mango seed? I didn't, until a few weeks ago. 

I love Mangos and right now they are kind of my go to food. Mango's in salads, fruit salad, cooked up to go over chicken, mango gummies, the list goes on and on. So, a few weeks ago I started to wish I had my own Mango tree so that I didn't have to buy Mangos anymore.  I googled "How to grow a Mango Tree" and sure enough tons of videos popped up. I learned that all you have to do is separate the husk from the seed and then plant the seed. I'm not sure if the plant will actually ever bear fruit but I figured it's worth a shot!

 The other part of this story is that I planted the Mango seed as part of a Value Project for Personal Progress. Have faith the seed will grow, take care of it for at least ten hours and then harvest whatever you planted (I planted some herb seeds as well, in case the mango tree never grew). I have been in Young Women's for a while now and finally decided to crack down and start working on Personal Progress. Well, I planted the seed and a couple weeks went by and I started getting nervous that maybe I had planted it wrong or it died but then one day I went out to water and low and behold a little sprout had shot up. I couldn't believe it! Below are some pics of the little sprout.

 I kind of think it looks like that character from star wars called Jar Jar or something, the one with the big ears.

My herbs are also growing....slowly...I don't remember them taking so long to grow last time. I can't wait to make Pesto with the basil, now I just need to figure out how to harvest pine nuts!

Remember a while back I posted about the plant our neighbor gave us? I thought for sure we were going to kill it when we moved it inside our house and planted it in a new pot. The old pot was actually prettier but had a huge crack down the side of it. The plant lost a few leaves but it finally bounced back with new leaves that are brighter and bigger than ever before. So happy we didn't kill Joy's 15 year old plant!