Swim Lessons and Oral Surgery

I had my wisdom tooth out this morning. I have only ever had just the one, and it was perfectly comfortable in its place for all these years. We went to the dentist last week, and he suggested I make an appointment to have it taken out. I scheduled the time off work and worried. I went to work this morning for an hour to wrap up a project and we went. What would be in store for me? Could I handle this?

The extraction from start to finish lasted fifteen minutes. They numbed me. They pushed on it. I heard a cracking sound, and we were done. I've been chewing on gauze for the last four hours.

We ran to Walmart afterwards to get recovery supplies: ice cream for milkshakes, fruit and vegetables for smoothies (pineapple/cucumber/spinach is actually really good), chicken broth, and penicillin. We were there before the pharmacy even opened. This would prove to be problematic considering Peri had her first swim lesson at 10:00.

We decided that it is important to be able to swim, and Pullman Aquatic Center has an excellent infant swim program. Classes run for a half hour every Friday morning for a 12-week course. Peri did really well. She's a great little infant swimmer.

Peri is excited to get into the pool.

"This is the way we wash our hair. In the swimming pool."

Peri can float pretty well.

Also very excited to have Mom with her.

I'm coming for you, Dad.

I'm going to get you, Dad.

Bye Dad! I'm swimming this way now.

Waiting for Naomi and Peri to get ready, I checked my email to find an invitation for a phone interview at a place in Wisconsin, a place which is aware that I'm not from Wisconsin and would therefore offer a relocation benefit. This excites me.

I've had a pretty eventful day, and all before 12:00.

Baby Shower!

So today is my friend Emily's baby shower! She liked how we did our baby shower so much, she decided to also do a Baby-Q. It's family friendly that way. Husbands get to come if they want!

Anyway I was trying to think all week what we should get them for a gift, and I just couldn't for the life of me think of anything.... Until I saw this:

Bonnie Marcus Collection

And I thought, "That would be perfect!" But I wasn't going to buy one, especially not for $20 (not because Emily isn't worth $20, but because we're poor, and I can't justify that kind of money for a 5x7 frame, even if some of the proceeds go to breast cancer research). And even if I wanted to buy it, it wouldn't arrive in time for the shower (I found this yesterday). So what's a girl to do but make her own? And I did, after a trip to Michael's for a paper pack that Gary's mom let us know was half off this weekend! Score!

And this is what she looks like:

What do you think? Is it as good as the original?

I really like how she turned out. I drew the silhouette and cut her out with an X-acto knife all by myself! I thought that was going to be hard, but it turned out to be pretty easy since Gary was also nice enough to get new sharp blades for my knife. I wanted to make her look more like Emily, but I totally failed in that regard. And Emily definitely isn't that huge! Can you imagine?

And because a photo frame wasn't enough for me, we got them some things to do while they wait to have their baby when the time comes. I found early labor to be pretty boring, so having some of these things would have been awesome!

Finally, thanks Elaine for telling us about the paper sale! I'm pretty jazzed about using my new paper in other projects!

(Update 1/18/2014: I've made some new ones and posted them to my Etsy store!)

St. Patrick's Day Decorations

I've been having a lot of fun decorating our fireplace mantel for the last couple months. I'm not very good at it, but it does make me happy. Technically, the first decorations did were for Christmas, but all I really did was put up the beanbag nativity and our advent calendar. I will get Christmas done properly this year...

  But for now I'm working on my decorating skill by doing all the major (and not-so-major) holidays in between. And right now I'm focusing mainly on the mantel I because with Peri being the mover that she is, I've got my work cut out for me just trying to keep up.

Here's a picture of how Valentine's Day looked:

 It was not overly fantastic, but we did have fun making the hearts as a family. You can't really tell in the picture, but the big square is a heart made out of our hand prints. Peri's are the red in the middle. The garland was also a lot of fun to make, but since I'm kind of not smart sometimes, I kept cutting the letters out backwards! That's why the V doesn't look the same as the others...I was running out of paper . >.>

 I like this month's much better! Still not the greatest, but I was using what I had on hand for the most part. As you can see, I went with a little different St. Patrick's Day theme. Celtic knots instead of the normal shamrocks and leprechauns! I like it a lot. Gary was so nice to let me purchase a few things to fill out my decorating. He's such a nice husband.

 I made a moss box to put the little apothecary jar up higher. I had a littler one for the middle glass, but I am too lazy to cover it with moss, so I just took it down for now. Ribbon is so awesome!

 I printed this Celtic knot from a place called Vintage Printable. It is pretty cool.

 I downloaded a celtic font and printed letters on green paper. This picture frame was in the Valentine's mantel too, but we hadn't yet filled it up with pictures, so I decided to use it for actual decoration this time around. I even found the last corner knot, so it doesn't look as funny!

 I really, really like my wreath and these two Celtic crosses. They make me happy.

For the garland I just looked online and saved a bunch if Celtic knot pictures  to print out onto different shades of green paper. I was going to cut out all of the little spaces in the knots too, but I didn't have a good way of doing so. I still like how it looks.

We actually aren't going to be in town on St. Patrick's Day, but we're planning on making corned beef and cabbage  and perhaps even a fruit rainbow like one I saw on Pinterest. My little baby brother is speaking in Sacrament on Sunday before he reports to the MTC on his mission a couple weeks from now, so we'll have a corned beef feast with him! Yum!

Menu Board

A while ago, I saw this on Pinterest: 

Once Upon a Chocolate Chip Cookie

And I decided then and there that I wanted one, and I wanted one now. I'd been trying to keep up with meal planning since I married Gary and became all domestic and such. The thing is, menu planning is really hard! I had to assemble all my recipes and figure out how much of everything I needed, and also remember what I still had on hand from last week's menu that needed to be used up. This usually involved extensive searches on the internet and lots of going back and forth between cupboard and fridge and recipe. And now with Peri around too, it's even harder to figure things out whilst she's clamoring around my knees begging for my attention. Though now that I've finally got her to take naps in her crib, instead of on my shoulder, I have some spare time for a couple hours a day! Yay! 

Anyways, I wanted my own menu board, and about a week or so ago, I finally made one! At first I wanted one just like the above, because it's so cute and orderly looking, but I didn't have a frame, (well I have lots of frames, but not one without glass that would work well), and no clothes pins and not a lot of cute paper to work with. But whilst I was cleaning out some junk in our house, I came across my old college girl white board that we don't use anymore, simply because we have many bigger and better white boards that we do use. I thought to myself, "Oh, that'll work!" And it has. 

It isn't nearly as cute as my inspiration, but that's okay, because it does its job just as well! The days of the week are in German, because that's how we do things here. I wanted to do Speisekarte instead of menu, but I didn't have that many letters. I'll change it someday. I'll also put some cute paper in the background someday too. The menu cards have magnets glued to one end on the back, and the ingredients for the dinners are written on the back, as well as any backing information (temp and time) that I need to remember. This makes getting shopping lists together so much easier! 

The top box is for meals we haven't eaten yet, and the bottom for things we have. Sometimes I just pull things out randomly, but since I have a bunch of leftover meat from last week, I went through and brought out meals that use the meats I have. Or I can just substitute meats and veggies for what I have on hand. Easy peasy! The boxes are held on by magnets too, so when the bottom one fills up, I can just switch them around, instead of moving handfuls of paper around. 

I would have liked to laminate them, since I take the meal card off the board and use it as a reference for things that I need while I'm cooking, but I didn't have any contact paper.

Incidentally, the days of the week aren't stuck on with magnets; I just used glue stick to put it right onto the board. It'll come off easily enough if I ever need it too.  

I also have a couple of fun things on my menu cards such as:

This way I don't always have to cook and we can keep adding recipes to our board.

And of course, I was sure to make plenty of extra cards for the try something new category, if we end up liking it a whole lot!

And that's my menu board! My niece Jeilyn was here last Thursday, and she thought it was just the coolest thing! She wanted to help me take off the cards we used and put new ones on, and asked me what we were having every day of the week. She also helped me to make the tacos! She asked me to make one for her house too. Maybe I just might!

A few more pictures, just because.

I had the urge to take more pictures of my beautiful baby girl this morning! She's so cute It's hard not to take pictures all the time. And with a newly charged battery, I had no reason not to!

So here are a few pictures of my baby doing her baby things! (oh, and please ignore the mess in the background. thank you!)

She likes to cruise around the coffee table pretty much all the time. She still can't quite get up on her own, but only because she has trouble navigating the overhang.

I love her eyes! Where did you get such pretty eyes?

Seriously, can you get any cuter than this?

Apparently it is possible.

This is her spanning the distance from coffee table to couch. She likes to go back and forth.

Random picture of mom just for fun! Does she look like me yet?

Peri thinks the lens cap is a good thing to chew on. I suppose she would know, being the resident teether and all.

On another note, I can finally see and feel her very first tooth coming in! Go Peri Go! Mom is so excited!

An Outing to the Park

So we went for a little walk with Peri around Sunnyside Park while the weather was nice and snapped a few pictures! Not as many as we'd like, though since our battery went dead. Oh well. I learned that I have a lot to learn about picture taking, but we're getting there!

Without further ado, a family outing!

Okay, this isn't part of the outing, but isn't it cute the strange ways she is comfortable sleeping?

In the parking lot at Sunnyside. Do you like their nearly identical looks?

We had fun taking pictures on the rocks where the itty-bitty stream is in the summer.

Peri had a good time walking around the duck pond with Daddy.

Our first try down the slide wasn't very successful. She didn't get that you're supposed to sit.

"I don't get it Mom. "

"Oh! I See!"

"I don't think it's as exciting as you want it to be, Mom."

Snuggle!

She was happy before she knew it went back and forth too.

Then she was a little less sure about it.

Here's a random picture that I took of some guy and his little boy also looking at the duck pond. I just thought it was a good picture.

It was a pretty fun outing, and I think Peri enjoyed herself! She's getting so big  and awesome I can hardly stand it!