Photo Bomb from March through May!

The many faces of Emi:

Hailey and Emi loved dogsitting Mandy and Sadie:  While my parents were packing and moving to Washington, we offered to watch the dogs.  Between my dad going back and forth, cleaning the carpets, etc Dogs at the house just wasn't going to work.  Hailey and Emi loved having the dogs around.  They would go on walks and play on them and with them.  Emi is usually a cranky waker but if she knew Sadie was around she was stop crying immedatiately and go look for her.  Emi loved Sadie.  If she was having a melt down because someone wouldn't pick her up or coddle her, she was go cry on Sadie.  Fortunately for me, Mandy left and a couple weeks later Sadie left.  The girls took it fairly well when we told them the dogs were up in Washington with Nana and Papa.  They would still ask for Sadie or Mandie when we go over the my parents house to work on it.  It's funny because to Emi all dogs are Sadie or Mandy.  Big dogs are Mandy and hyper dogs are Sadie.

Making messes.  They love to make messes.  The love playing with the buttons we found at the Karen Boutique, aka my mothers house.  Oh boy can they make messes with buttons, but they enjoy it and luckily it cleans up well.  It can keep Hailey entertained for at least an hour.

Emi loves her food.  Enough said there

She loves her pop pop and playing. Emi has a small toy lawn mower that she loves to push around the house.  Sometimes she even dresses up with it.  

We have spent many hours cleaning and organzing my partnts house.  Hailey and Emi want to be part of that sometimes, or maybe they just enjoy eating yogurt and watching Disney movies.

The gardens have been exploding with Fruit so we’ve made fruit leather and lots of jam.  Peaches from my parents house.  Strawberries and apricots from the garden.  Plums and apriums from Michelle Ravell.

The many faces of Hailey:

Hailey had one of the scariest adventures of our parenting life so far.  Gash on her forhead.  We were getting ready for bed and I was doing laundry when all of a sudden Hailey starts screaming in her bedroom.  I ask Joel to go get her since I'm switching wet clothes to the dryer.  He goes in and comes out freaking out.  Hailey's face is covered in blood.  I drop the clothes and run to grab something to stop the bleeding.  When we get the bleeding somewhat under control we see a large gash on the bridge of her nose between her eyes.  Ok freaking out a little.  How on earth did she get that!  There's nothing in her bedroom but beds and books and a carboard box.  We inspect the carboard box but there are no telling signs that she her it.  We we freak out some more.  Do we take her the ER to have it stitched?  No, we don't have insurance and that would be expensive and we'd be there all night.  It was already 7:30.  Do we superglue it?  I don't know?  My dad was supposed to fly in at 10 maybe he could stitch it.  Was call the EQP to help Joel give her a blessing.  Joel has to be up at 4 am  so I told him I'd stay up with Hailey and wait for my dad to call us back.  I eventually drive over to my Dad's house for his opinion because his phone is dead and going to voicemail.  Of all days his plane was delayed and he didn't get there til 11.  By this time the wound is no loner bleeding and it's starting to seep.  We discussed it and figured that it would be more traumatic to numb Hailey and then stitch her.  So we left it alone.  She slept that night and all she remembers is going to Papa's because he was going to fix her owie.  Joel lost two nights of sleep worrying that she was going to have a horrible scar and be made fun of.  Hailey didn't loose any sleep.  She knows she has an owie but we put oils on it and then she goes back out to play!

She loves sushi.

She loves buttons!

She loves her books and reading them in boxes.

 

We started a project of painting river stones at the garden to help us label the boxes so we know what is growing.  We started it as a one time Saturday activity but so many people wanted to come and paint that the paint, thanks to the Karen Boutique, stays at the garden and people can paint with their kids, grandkids, or just paint themselves.  

We went to a city festival and they had a small petting zoo.  Hailey and Joel got to meet the monkey.  Apparently the monkey loves tall men with beards.  Hailey wasn’t quite sure what to think about the monkey.

Hailey loves when we make jam because she eats the strawberry or peach soup before processing.  It is a mess of an adventure but it's totally worth it.  Plus when else do I mop my floors!

We also like to go to the parks here in Vegas.  One of Hailey’s favorite is Craig Ranch.  It had rock slides and she has learned how to climb up the dirt side instead of use the stairs.  

We have already made multiple trips this summer and they travel much better than Emi’s first travel adventure.  When things were starting to get overwhelming with the house and office, we knew we had to get out of the house.  When should be go?  Well I needed to drop off the old sewing machines to Grandpa Clarke so we made a weekend out of it for Memorial day.  We all had the time off and if I stayed in Vegas, I knew I'd be working some way or another.  

I woke up at 5 the morning we were to leave and couldn't go back to sleep.  I went out and started cleaning the car.  Hailey came out at 6 and said time to go buh bye.  It was another two hours before we actually left but Hailey and eventually Emi stayed in the car until we were ready to leave.  I guess you could say they were excited.  

While we were there, we didn't work on project after project like usual.  We dropped the girls off as soon as we got there and Joel and I went to Manti.  He had never been through a live temple endowment and we hadn't had a date night in a long time.  Grandma Margaret and Grandpa had a wonderful time watching the girls.  It was a night a Cinderella and snuggles.   Hailey got to the house and went straight to the corner where Granpa keeps the chocolate covered raisens and almonds.  She was enthusiastic in opening the container so they ended up all over the floor.  When we got in to find her, she was trying to hide the envidence back in the jar, while keeping a few in her mouth of course.  Emi, now Emi loved the dried apricots.  She would climb up on the heater and reach them then sit down to eat them.  I would find the remains of the apricot, that she'd gotten tired of chewing, somewhere else in the house later. 

 We picked apricots at the San Miguel Garden before we left but I wasn't going to have time to process them before leaving, so I took them with us.  We made the jam at Grandma and Grandpas house.  It was still a relaxing adventure.  This trip wasn't really about projects, it was more about relaxing and sleeping.  And we did our fair share of that.

The main project for the weekend was to fix Hailey's bear blanket.  It has been dragged around by Hailey for 3 years and it was finally past the point of repair.  I needed to crop it and rebind it.  Grandpa helped me do that.  We had to do it while Hailey wasn't aware so she wouldn't freak out on us.  Once we got the binding mostly done I gave it back to Hailey so she could take a nap.  I hadn't done the final binding but at least it was sewn on.  Hailey looked at her blanket and picked and the rough edges and said, "You cut my bear blanket..."  yes, yes we did.  But it looks so much better.  Now it can last another 3 years.  We lost about an inch all the way around but the smaller size doesn't seem to bother her any. Thank you Grandpa!

Joel and Andrea:

Katherine Pieper has been coming into the office a lot lately to get some dental work done.  While there she talks to me about her business, permanent pigmentation or what I call tattooed makeup.  Finally I got the bur under my saddle and asked if she would do eyeliner for me.  Of course I had to pick one of the most painful of the procedures. It wasn’t bad at all really until I started to swell.  Once my eyelids started to swell the pain scale jumped to like an 8/10.  Would I do it again?  Yep.  I like not putting makeup on and looking like I have!  I’ll have to go back for touchups  after a month or so. 

Hailey is finally big enough to ride her tricycle longer distances.  She loves going around the block while we push the Bob or cycle with her.  Emi loves the chariot and would go for rides every day and multiple times a day.  When Janea was babysitting them, that’s just what they would do.  Dang heat…

Projects!  I have had a good time learning more about my sewing machine.  I inherited a Babylock serger from Mom when she moved.  I got her old one.  But I had no idea how to use a serger.  Grandpa Clarke came and tuned it and gave me basic lessons.  Then I joined a facebook group and started asking questions.  I would look through a manual Mom had given me and realize I could do something.  I serged unpaper wipes for the girls.  With potty training around the corner I wasn’t excited about used rolls upon rolls of toilet paper.  I also made some for Joel.  He wasn’t excited about cloth wipes so I made him some with brass instruments on it.  I told him, “Look I made you some brass so you could wipe your… ;)”

Along with the serger, I inherited lots of scraps of fabric.  I didn’t know what to do with it.  Gma Margaret said, just start sewing things together so I did.  I actually turned out cute so I made it into something.  My ironing board was hideous , so I gave it a new do.  It was fun piecing everything together on my sewing machine.  Then I learned how to add elastic to my serged edges.  That made things much easier and it finished off my ironing board nicely.  I still haven’t figured out what to do with the bees and checker board pattern scrap that I started.

More attempts.  Sonia Brooksby gave me some old barstools.  I tried to seel them away but it didn’t work.  No one wanted them.  The cover was pretty hideous though, so I looked at how it was done and tried my hand at making new covers.  When I researched new covers online, all the websites recommended stapling them, but the cover on it currently had been done with a drawstring.  So I figured it out.  My first attempt was ok.  My second attempt was a complete bomb.  My last attempt I had figured it out so I made one out of steelers fabric for Joel. :)

 

I had lots of peaches from my parents tree.  We pulled them off and let them ripen then made peach puree out of them.  I waited too long on one patch to process it after it was pureed so it fermented and I lost probably 12 pints of jam.  That was extremely sad.  But on the other side, I helped out a friend and she shared the bounty of her garden, which included more peaches so I get to make my peach jam again!  I found that I prefer freezer jam because it’s easier and I prefer the less sugar recipes because I like the taste of the fruit more than the taste of the sugar.