Saying Goodbye

So yesterday I packed Riley up and took her to my cousin Christine's house about 2 hours away to say goodbye to my Grandparents. They are flying back to Arkansas this next week and I won't be able to see them again because I am working. It was hard to say goodbye because I don't see them too often and Riley is growing so fast that I am sad they are going to miss so much. The most fun part of the day was our crazy little photo shoot with the kids and the grandparents! Here are several pictures of the day. Callie (1 year old), Kutter (3 years old) and of course Riley (4 months old).

Christine and Kameron's house is adorable, I hope that one day I have a house that is that cute and of course all I wanted to do when I got home was work on our building plans for our new home. In the meantime Christine and I decided that we are going to go to the Farm Chicks show in June in Spokane! Can't wait and hopefully I can find some really cute decorations for the new house!  

Grandpa and Kutter

On the way home Riley and I had a scary experience. An SUV that was in front of us overcorrected and went onto 2 wheels and almost flipped over. It scared me so badly but in the end we made it safe and sound to Tri-Cities. When we got to Tri-Cities Patrick and I went to the Olive Garden for date night and Grandma Kay watched Riley. It was fun and very much needed. 

Grandma and Riley

Grandma, Me, Riley and Grandpa

OLD Books

So I have these pretty old books that I got at a yard sale when all the girls in our family went to the beach last summer. We drove up to a pretty run down trailer and almost turned around but decided to look. I found these cool books and bought them for $1. The pages are pretty worn, obviously old and the books appear to be bound pretty nicely. There were a couple of people at work interested in seeing them so I brought them in and started doing some research.


What we found out was that this Charles Dickens book titled Martin Chuzzlewitz is an Alta Edition which means Edition A or first edition according to Wikipedia. That said I looked up the first edition print date, since there is not a publishing date in the book and it could have been published somewhere around 1843-1860's. Now I don't know if this book is that old, the only story I got from the previous owner was that her grandmother had this sitting on her shelf and it never moved until now. I can find only a couple other copies online of which have no pictures for sale running anywhere from $12 to thosands of dollars.

This other one is called My Husband and I by Tolstoi. I am not as familiar with this author and really can't find too much online regarding this book. So if you have any information please feel free to share with me! All in all I have a couple offers for people to buy these but I'm not really sure what they are worth if anything. Kind of cool to have them on my bookshelf but if I could make some money off of them I may change my mind. Maybe I should go to the Pawn Stars store in Vegas when I am there. I was going to attempt the Antique Roadshow but it is in Seattle the same day as my best friend is getting married in August, so that won't be happening.

4 months old

Ready to go to her 4 month appointment

Riley had her 4 month checkup yesterday with Dr. Wren. Unfortunately Patrick couldn't go, which was tough for me with her getting shots but we both survived. She is getting to be such a big girl she weighed 13 lbs 11 oz (57th percentile), she is 24.8 inches long (71st percentile) and her head is 40.5 cm (36th percentile). Dr. Wren's conclussion was that she is boxy (like her dad) with a tiny head (like her mom), poor girl!

She is very interested in food right now so Dr. Wren said we can start her on rice cereal if we would like. Everytime I eat around her she just stares and lately she has been grabbing for it. No matter if she is in a dead sleep when she smells food she usually wakes up, never fails! And Dr. Wren says that it is probable that she is teething with all the drooling that she is doing and how she wants to constantly chew on things so that should be great fun to go through shortly.
She also got 2 shots in her legs, poor girl was such a trooper. She looked at me and cried for about 10 seconds and as soon as I picked her up she snuggled into my chest and stopped crying. It made me feel so great that she feels protected with me. The rest of the day she did fairly well, just a little fussy but after getting a bath and eating she got tucked away in bed sleeping soundly through the night.

Sitting up like a big girl

She loves her toes now that she can reach them!

Uncle Andrew was also in town and got to come see her, it was so funny watching him with her since he hadn't seen her since she was a baby. Unfortunatley she didn't do a lot of talking because she was a bit under the weather. He wanted to cuddle her and lay her down like a baby but for any of you that have seen Riley we know that she wants to sit up like a big girl, not lay down with you. She definately has a mind of her own, stubborn some may call it!

All in all at the end of the day when she decides it is time for bed I love the time where she snuggles into my chest and falls fast asleep. I then can't wait for her to wake up (hopefully not too early) and smile at me because she can't wait to talk to me and play! It will be so fun to watch her grow up but man is the time flying by.

Dance Team

Yesterday was a very eventful day. We traveled the 2.5 hours to Yakima to watch my sister Miranda dance at the 4A State Dance Competition. They did so great, best I have ever seen them dance and they ended up winning 2nd!!! This is the video of their state dance, I'm one proud sister!

On another positive note Riley was awsome. I was worried about her being in the car for almost 5 hours in one day and then sitting in one seat for almost 6 hours but she was entertaining to everyone around her and quite for the most part. The one time she did get fussy I let her suck on a fry (I know horrible mom) and she quited right down to take a nap. The dance team sure gets a kick out of her, not really the best advocate for preventing teen pregnancy because she is such a good and cute baby but it is all an illusion people, she does get fussy and being a mom is the hardest thing I have ever done!

Aunt Miranda with Riley at Districts in Pasco 3/10/12

Riley dressed up for Districts 3/10/12

Mommy and Riley getting ready for Districts 3/10/12

One Year Ago

Thanks for the picture Jacob!

A year ago today our family lost a wonderful woman, Marj Johnson to a ruptured aortic aneurysm. It was such a hard day because Patrick and I had just found out we were going to have a baby and she couldn't have been more excited. We have been reminiscing all day about the day we lost Marj a year ago and so many fun stories are surfacing. She was a feisty woman who did more with her life than I could ever even think of doing and I was so lucky to have gotten to know her in the last few years of her life. In memory of Marj we gave Riley the middle name Ann, which also happens to be my middle name as well. I am hoping we can instill some of Marj's values and personality into our daughter and hopefully she will find our stories as funny as we do when she is old enough to understand.

What makes me the most sad is the day before Marj died she had told Patrick that she was going to call me the next day and talk to me about being pregnant and give me some advice. I was so excited and then when I didn't receive the phone call I knew something was wrong. Oddly enough Patrick had been working at the farm an hour away, which doesn't have cell phone service but for some reason decided to come back early. If it weren't for him being home he would have missed Marj's last minutes and I know he would have regretted it so I was so thankful that so many of us were able to gather at her bedside. Another odd event happened because I was supposed to be at work and due to low census I was at home when I received the phone call so I was able to go as well. God was looking out for us that day, we were able to be there with Marj and in some way it was a blessing to her as well, she had been suffering with so much pain. We will always remember you Grandma Marj!

Single Mom with an awake baby!

So this is the first time that I have actually felt like a single mom. For all of you mom's or dad's that are raising a child on their own, I don't know how you do it. Patrick is working overnight in the Tri-Cities for the next couple of nights so that means I have Riley. Unfortunately I am working 12 hour shifts as well so my parents, my mother in law and my sister are helping a ton watching Riley, I don't know what I would do without my family!
Anyways coincidentally this comes as perfect timing for Patrick as we are trying to get Riley to sleep in the crib and last night I was up with her almost at every hour. She didn't need anything, mostly just wanted to know I was still there. I guess I need to read some books in my spare time (haha) on how to do this. Should I let her cry it out in the middle of the night and self soothe or should I just run in there and put her binkie back in, let her know I am there and she falls right asleep again. I did the second option when she was in her bassinet and it turned out great, she knew she was taken care of and eventually stopped waking up at night for that comfort. We did attempt the crying it out method about a week back when she was being especially fussy before bed and she ended up screaming for 25 minutes until I couldn't handle it anymore and picked her up, the instant I picked her up she snuggled into my arms and passed out, I had her in bed in less than 5 minutes.
I guess this will just have to be trial and error just like everything else has had to be. Riley never seems to go by the book on anything so I suppose that is worthless to even try. On the plus side I do let her come and snuggle with me in the morning (it has become a ritual as soon as daddy leaves) and she sleeps great, usually wakes up to play for 10 minutes and then wants a nap again soon after for a couple of hours.

Canvas Artwork

Patrick and I are selling our house, what a chore, I feel like I haven't had a second to do anything for myself the past month. When we first met this is the house that Patrick owned and I owned my own even smaller house. The opportunity came up when our renters wanted to move out of my old house for us to move into it so we could sell the bigger house and we bought 10 acres of land so that we could build our dream house. So we crazily bought the 10 acres, moved out of the 1250 square foot house and into the 800 square foot house. Are you keeping track of all the moving? So that is where the staging comes into play and boy has it been interesting and kind of fun. Our house officially went on the market yesterday and so far we haven't got any calls on it but we are hopeful and a little nervous, especially with 2 mortgage payments and now a land payment and no renters!

So I had this dark brown wall seperating our kitchen and dining room. Originally I had a canvas wedding picture and a sign that said And they lived happily ever after. It was really cute but now that we are trying to sell our house I had to "declutter" and "depersonalize" as HGTV would tell me to help stage my house for selling. I think this project turned out pretty good and added some color to the dark brown wall.  

Unfortunately I didn't take pictures of how I made this artwork but I can explain it pretty well. Materials needed: Canvas (I found mine at Hobby Lobby, 2 boards of 11X14" for $5.99 and they were 30% off), Coordinating fabric (I bought 1 yard of each pattern but only needed about 3/4 yards. I got this at Joanns for $2 a yard), Staple gun (my dad had one).

All I did started with the fabric upside down and centered the canvas and cut the appropriate amount of material, about 1 inch extra on each side. Make sure that it is going to cover the side of the canvas and still give you enough to have some on the backside of the canvas. I used my staple gun to staple the top and bottom, making sure to stretch the fabric as tight as I could keep it smooth and then I folded the ends like a present and stapled the sides. In hindsight I would have ironed the fabric beforehand but stretching it took out most of the wrinkles.

The Crib...

Riley is now 4 months old and has been sleeping through the night 90% of the time for the past two weeks. Problem is she is still in her bassinet and her feet and head basically touch the top and bottom of the bassinet. So tonight is the first night she will be sleeping in her crib, not right next to her momma. Obviously I am more distraught about this than I'm sure Riley is but I will power through this hard time. What worries me the most is she turns onto her belly while sleeping and she just kind of babbles when she wants up so I am afraid the baby monitor won't pick it up. My wonderful husband was sure to check the sensitivity of the monitor prior to her going to sleep.

Progress: so it took a lot more coaxing than usual but Riley finally fell asleep around midnight in the crib. It was like she knew something was going on.

Conclusion: All went well. She went to sleep at midnight and woke up crying at 5 AM which was unusual for her so of course I raced in to see why she was crying. She had rolled over to the side of the crib and her arm was in between the slats so she was stuck, scared the bejesus out of me but she didn't seem to notice, she proceeded to eat and then fall back asleep pretty easily. I would call this night a success!

First Blog

As soon as I found out I was pregnant about a year ago I started looking at blogs. Blogs about motherhood, families, crafts, nursing, etc. I have a favorites page a mile long that I continually check and add to. I do this to get great ideas that I rarely implement and remember things that I may use in the future.

This is my beautiful daughter Riley. She is only 2 months old in this picture but is 4 months now and so much bigger...isn't she cute?!?! I decided it might not be a bad idea for her to be able to read more about her life growing up and her family. I don't have anything like that from my parents and I am continually fascinated by the stories I learn from my grandparents. So this is my attempt to keep a type of journal so that my children will be able to look back on how their life was in the beginning.

Wedding photo courtesy of Markseye.com

My husband and I are constantly laughing. In fact every time we are around my mom she says we could have our own TV show because we are so funny. Interestingly enough we have several ideas for TV shows. I guess I think that some things that we do in our every day life are interesting or funny enough to share, not to mention I think I can learn from a lot of our experiences and grow as a family.

I also come home with many interesting/crazy/inspirational stories from my job as an Emergency Room Nurse that I would love to share with people, of course while minding HIPPA! I have always dreamed of one day compiling all of these stories and writing a book, although writer is not one of my goals in life I just think that it is interesting for people to read about. Not to mention some of my very best friends work there and we tend to get a little goofy at the end of a 12 hour shift where things like this end up happening. This is my friend Lori!





And last but not least I will be posting whatever I attempt to craft along the way. I never thought I was a crafty person but low and behold when I had my daughter I decided this was a great idea. My husband tells me I am not the woman he married because I was complete opposite of this when I married him. Back then I was all about work and fun and I didn't spend time at Joann's or cooking and I certainly didn't own a sewing machine. Now I am domestic, or at least attempting to be! I grew up with a very crafty mother, she owned a ceramic shop, she did toll carving and painting, made elaborate cakes and she crocheted baby blankets like crazy so I always wondered why I didn't get the crafting gene but apparently it just took a while to show up. This is my mom making our Christmas stocking this year, so crafty!

So on top of all of these subjects I also would love to review books whenever possible so any suggestions will be greatly appreciated. I will also be blogging about house stuff because we are working on building a house and I'm sure we will have many trial and tribulations to talk about!
So these are the things I will be blogging about, hopefully you find it informational, helpful and most of all entertaining!