My mom loves to quilt. In fact, she is obsessed. She buys fabric like I buy paper. I had the idea to make a layout that looked like a log cabin block. I think it turned out pretty good. I used the fall colors because my mom loves the fall and those earthy tones. She loves it when the weather turns cool and the leaves start to change. When I was living back east I would always take pictures of the trees for her and send her beautiful leaves from the ground.

I want to dedicate this new scrapbook page to my momma. She’s the best lady ever. My mom is my inspiration. She teaches me by example to become a better mother. She always has a listening ear. I know I can call on her when I need to vent. Her hugs can soothe any physical pain and also those emotional ouchies. She is my comfort. She is selfless. She has always given up her wants for our needs. She is a joy to be around. She makes me laugh.

My mom is afraid to read my blog because she is afraid that I’ll be writing something about her… Well, today is that day! and Mom, I want everyone to know how much I love you. XOXO Thanks!

This paper is from the fall kit by the Shabby Princess and the stitches are from Scrapgirls.

It was a blustery day here in Draper Town. I spent most the day thinking about Winnie the Pooh, wondering if I was going to get blown away on a kite string. I have really enjoyed the warm weather but I always like a good rain storm. It makes the world melancholy and gives me a good reason to hunker down into my cave of a basement and not feel guilty waisting the sunshine…

Last night our little family went out in the back yard to do some yard work. Since we recently moved in, we are learning what it takes to maintain our flower beds. The spring weather has brought up more weeds than we expected. We’ve only put a dent in the weeding and whatever we did pull will probably just pop up again.

My little princess kept her self busy with a worm we found. She named him Mr. Wormy. Creative, huh? She pet him, sang him songs and rocked him to sleep. She made him a home in a casserole dish.

My buddy found a shovel and was completely happy grunting and making dents in the hard utah dirt. I’m sure he felt like such a man with his tool and was determined to figure out how it worked. Now that I see this picture I realize I should have wiped his nose before I took the pic but at the moment I thought it was funny. Now it just looks gross. Sorry!

I took these snap shots as the sun was going down and the wind was picking up. My camera is a piece of junk when it come to bad lighting. But the moment was fun anyway.

In my church, each member helps out by taking on a responsibility or a job. We call them “callings.” These callings can be accepted or rejected and they usually change every couple of years or so depending on where the help is needed. Well, because we just moved to Utah, I received a new calling. I was pretty shocked about the calling because it wasn’t something I had experience in and I happen to consider this a job for an older lady but of course I accepted because they needed the help. Lets just say, though, that I wasn’t very excited about it.

My calling was the Sacrament Chorister. This calling requires me to;

a) be on time to church

b) stand in front of 150 souls

c) sing the words to they hymns

d) smile to those souls who might be looking at me

e) try to look my best

f) wave my arm to the beat of the music in 4/4, 2/4 or 3/4 time

g) pick out hymns that coordinate with the topics of the meeting

So overall I figure I can handle this, right? I’m just a little bit nervous. The hardest part is actually getting my family there on time. I find every Sunday morning I am running around the house like a crazy chicken and cursing at hubby and kids because we are late. The second hardest part is feeling like I look okay. My first Sunday leading the music I had to buy a new outfit. I wish that I had a new outfit every Sunday, Sigh!

I have been leading the music now for 1 1/2 months. I’ve been doing a decent job (I think) and besides no one watches me. Everyone either has their noses in the hymn book, they’re daydreaming, or fussing with their kids to keep them quiet.

So this Sunday I was feeling confident because I knew the songs we were singing and didn’t even think twice about it. I get up there and start swinging my arm. We are plunking along at pretty good tempo when my organist, who is a cute little old grandma, has a little mess up. Okay, this happens every now and then. This grabs peoples attention. We keep going. Opps, it happens again, we keep going, oh, again and again… I’m still waving my arm, she is still trying to get going again, trying to find her place, we are still singing. Plunk, plunk at the organ. Everyone is now looking up. We painfully finish the first verse.

Okay, the second verse is a good point to regain composure. The first line is a little bumpy but then blip, blop, flop… at this point the song is unrecognizable. My organist just stops. I’m still singing, waving my arm. The congregation has stopped. I look over at my organist… I’m still singing… a solo apparently. I hear my voice echo through the chapel. What am I to do? I stop singing. I’m sure my face is bright red, my heart is beating and I flash an awkward grin towards the crowd. I’m afraid to look back at the organist, who I’m sure is about to pass out herself from embarrassment. She takes a deep breathe, which I felt lasted for minutes. I, on the other hand, haven’t taken a breathe for quite some time. We start the second verse over again. Things improved but not by much. It seemed like she played every 4th note right. At times I could hear the congregation singing something different then me. Oh well, the goal was to get this darn song over with.

When it was finally over I sat down next to my organist and gave her a big hug. I thought maybe she’d burst into tears. I was super embarrassed for myself but felt awfully bad for her. She said that she had played the song perfectly at home but her arthritis wasn’t letting her fingers move. Oh, what a bummer. I told her I thought it was my fault because I was beating too fast. Whatever the reason, it was one embarrassing Sunday and we still had two songs left.

Lets just say we sang them much, much slower.

Another weekend has come and gone. Overall it was a pretty good weekend. We had some friends come into town, we did a little rock climbing, watched a few movies. And now it’s Monday morning! The baby is already crying and pulling at my arm so I’m not sure how great this blog is going to be. I mean really… How do we get anything done around here. I’m his number one lady, his comfort, his food. owch! I need to cut his fingernails.

So for a quicky, I’ve put some of my latest layouts on flicker. They are from a mini book I’ve been working on. Aaaaa, I’m getting attacked. Someone help me….

I have been tagged by Kismet for the Real Mom’s Meme so because I am a real mom it took me a few days to get to it. Here you go…

Real moms need to wear depends while jumping on the tramp.

Real moms have babies that cry alot.

Real moms have messy cars full of toys, crumbs and sippy cups.

Real moms have pretzels all over the floor.

I just want to say thank you to all the wonderful and inspiring moms out there. Keep it up ladies.

Today was a pretty normal mommy day. Nothing catastrophic happened. I did realize though that I’m failing at making my life organized and clean. This past month I was inspired by some friends to try The Fly Lady It is a lovely program once you are doing it but turns out it is really hard to start…

I came home from my evening activities and took one look at my kitchen and about melted into one large heap of cold leftover cheese from the pizza that we ate for dinner (which, by the way, was crusted all over my kitchen counter). I thought someone help me please… so I hollered at my husband to clean up the kitchen while I put the baby to bed. Well, when I came out of the babies room, the cheese was still there. As I scrubbed the dishes, I made a commitment… “Tomorrow will be different!” I’m just going to start small though. I’m going to focus on my hot spots and get my errands done.

So with that said… it’s late and I’m tired. Good night dear sweet bloggies.

Last night we set up my old tramp. Emma has loved it. This morning she woke up at the crack of dawn and the first thing that can out of her mouth was “can I go jump on the trampoline?” She feels like she is flying. I think she also likes to watch the big kids next door jumping on their tramp. She soooo wants to be big like them. Why do we spend our whole childhood/teenagerhood trying to grow up so fast?

So we went out to jump today. When it was my turn to jump I thought I’d show Emma just how cool her momma is. You see, in high school I was on the diving team, so I can do a few flips and stuff. Well… I started to jump and… I had to stop pretty quickly… Lets just say that motherhood has really taken a toll on my body (a certain muscles to be exact). Let me make a recommendation… if you have had childbirth… put on some depends before you start to jump on a trampoline.

So now that age is creeping up on me I long for the summer days when I use to do nothing but jump all afternoon. I’d try to come up with as many cool tricks as I dared try and when those tricks didn’t work, I’d just lie down on the warm black bouncy fabric and look at the globe willow in my back yard swaying in the wind. Aawwww! That was nice. How things change, eh?

I think I have recovered from the weekend (except for a few gurgles from my tummy) but my house sure hasn’t. Mondays always seem to be my rebooting day. I have to reboot my brain to get back into Mommy mode– Time to get Busy!! I’d love to lay around some more and relax but my kitchen needs the dishwasher emptied and reloaded, the blankets from my sons crib need to be washed from his blowout that he managed to mush all over, the drawers in my bathroom have been completely emptied, and my fridge and pantry are running so low that my husband told me I had to go to the grocery store TODAY. Hummm… the beginnings of a great week.

One lovely thing did happen today. Remember the bed with no slats (I tried to put the link in but it didn’t work)… well my husband is a great guy but I would never want to do business with him because, man, he will call and pester you until he gets what he wants. He called the manager where we bought the bed and turns out there were slats in the back room. The night crew was clueless!! Arggg. They had acted so confident when we had pressed the issue. I can really be a pushover. So… anyhoo… our mattress is now up off the floor and ready to sleep in to night. No carpentry for me! Yea. That is all I’m going to do in it tonight… SLEEP!

I now have realized that I spelled exhaustion wrong in Sundays blog… you may, by now, realized that I am not the brightest bean in the bag. If fact, once, I couldn’t remember how to spell the work OF. I kept trying to make OV work. It makes sense right? OOOVVVV. Lets all say it together… au-vvv… the English language is crazy. It wasn’t until I was married that my husband told me that the word frustrated wasn’t pronounced fustrated… “I’m so fustrated!” I had no idea there was an R after the F. No one told me. I’ll chock it up to public education. So if you love me… overlook my misspelled words and confused grammar. (I’m obsessed with spell check (otherwise you’d really know how bad I am))

For the rest of the evening I’m going to work on some “bootyful”(as my 3year old princess says) layouts on photoshop to post tomorrow. He he, Fun for me!

That feeling of car sickness I had yesterday turned into so much more. I haven’t left the house today let alone my bathroom. Bummer. I need a tranquilizer. Isn’t it nice that you can’t catch  human viruses over the internet. We can sit in the comfort of our homes and still go shopping, google old boyfriends and spew our daily thoughts out to strangers who, hopefully, might care.

Okay, since I’m new to this blogging world, I’m going to admit that I don’t know any of the dos and don’ts.  In fact I don’t even know what lol means. Lots of Love?, Long or Low?, lustful or lonely? Someone fill me in here, please? I don’t even know any others to ask about. What are these abbreviations?? Can I make up my own? I’m feeling totally ooi (out of it) or ify(I feel Yucky) iagtp(i am going to puke). Hummm, what am I thinking about? Figure out this one, hdw’suwy? We should all start making up our own. What a great way to communicate.

Well, the babe is crying and pulling on my arm so forcefully it is getting difficult to type. Later ya’ll

Okay, I fully had the intention of spending a little time in front of the computer today and posting a lovely message and some pictures. Instead, I spent the day trying to make people happy and now it’s 10 pm and I’m tired and ready to go to bed. Unfortunately my daughter is still up, my husband wants to watch a movie and I think I have the beginnings of a stomach flu (either that or I’ve got car sickness is not going away.) Argg! I think this room is spinning.

With my dear kerflopy in town I, of course, had to go shopping with her to all the beautiful home decor stores they don’t have in Idaho. We had to rush around because my husband  and our mom weren’t so keen on being stuck at home with the kids while we were out shopping … So we scanned the stores as quick as we could (which actually wasn’t that fast because we had to stop at every little thing and say “how cute is that!!”) While we were out, I saw a pretty cute king size sleigh bed that was on sale for $350. Jess said “Ya, get it”  (because our mattress is on the ground right now) So I bought it (which I did approve with the hubby) but when we went to pick it up later that night I asked them where the slats were that supported the mattress. “Well… this is an outlet. We sell as is stuff. There aren’t any slats… none of our beds have them. That’s probably why they are here.” My husband responds, ” We will just unload the bed from the truck and get our money back.” “Sorry sir, there are no returns on clearance items.” So after some not so pleasant  discussion, we decided that I’m going to learn some carpentry… anyone know how to build wooden slats for a king bed???

It is now time to put the over tired 3 year old to bed. Get ready for a melt down. Thank you again for the warm welcome. (I never thought in all my life that my sis was popular but I think I really have to give her some credit on this lovely traffic! XOXO)

Next week I’m going to learn to use flicker so make sure you come back to see some pics.