Portland Trip

Wow, so I can't believe I didn't post anything all summer!  We actually managed to do quite a few fun things despite my crazy schedule and training for work.  So, here is a brief re-cap of some of our exploits!  I'm going to break it into a few posts so it's not sooo long. 

  First things first, in May I went to Portland for my little sister's graduation from art school.  I wish I had taken more pics of her amazing work, but sufice it to say that she is amazingly talented and if any of you have the means you should commission her to make you something.  She does metal- smithing (sorry Bella, not sure how that's spelled etc.)  so she makes statues, jewelry, pretty much, she's amazing!  I had a blast but it was strange to be away from Aliya and Daniel.

My lovely sister Elisabeth and the lovely silver teapot she made!

Me, Aunt Patty, and Elisabeth at the tea party

Elisabeth and her thesis work, I wish you could see it better

Me and my beautiful sister Elisabeth (yes I'm the older one, really)

My family after the graduation from left : Quest, Mom, Elisabeth, Me, Dad.

Cannon Beach, the pic doesn't do it justice

New JOB!

Wow, I am so excited! I just found out today that I got the job! For those of you who haven't heard anything about it, I recently interviewed for an assistant store manager position with Wal-Mart and today we found out that I got it! So, we will be moving (again) to Twin Falls, ID in a couple of months.  I will be in training at the IF store for about 6 weeks and then 2 weeks in Twin and then I'll be official! I feel so blessed, we have been waiting for a break like this and, just well yay! I can't even put it into words right now! We were jumping up and down and dancing around the house we were so excited!  Just wanted to share the good news!

Happy 5 Years!

Just wanted to tell the world how much I love my sweet amazing husband! I am a day late with this post, yesterday was our 5 year anniversary, but we will be celebrating it today though.  So many wonderful and difficult things have happened but we are still happy.  Our love has grown and I am so blessed to have Daniel for eternity. I love you babe!

  

Artshow, Easter, Etc.

So wow it has been forever! This post may be a bit long so I can catch up. Last month Daniel had one of his paintings displayed in the Statewide Art Competition here in Bountiful. We are so proud of him! He didn't win a prize or anything but he was excited just to be chosen for the show out of 300 some odd applicants.  Below is a picture of his painting entitled "Praise to the Man".  Let me know if you "get it".  I totally saw it but probably just because I watched it take shape.  Our parents had a hard time "seeing" it so I'm curious as to what other people see.  I wish you could see it in person, these pics don't really do it justice.

Easter was fun, a little disorganized as the sleep-deprived Easter bunny forgot to find the baskets til the morning of...then decided we should hide eggs in the yard only to open the curtains and find snow on the ground!  Argh! Luckily 2 year olds don't notice that the baskets magically appear later in the day, or that we waited til the snow melted to hide eggs in the late afternoon.  Aliya got an awesome new toy for Easter, called my pal Violet.  It's a leap frog toy and by connecting it to the computer you can teach it to say her name and what her favorite things are! So cool and she loved it! She wouldn't even turn it around for me to take a picture.  It says things like  "I love you Aliya.",  "My favorite food is strawberries.  Is that your favorite too?"  Adorable.  I highly recomend it, (they have a green one for boys.)

Also for Easter I decided we should make some cute sugar cookies.  It didn't work out all that well from the start but we had fun.  Daddy was sick so Aliya and I started getting out the ingredients and getting ready.  I got out the step ladder and let Aliya help pour things into the bowl, I asked her to put the softened butter into the bowl and she reached out and grabbed it, of course coming away with a ton of butter on her fingers which kind freaked her out "you need to wipe it Mommy!"  but it was hilarious!  Then once we get all the ingredients into the bowl I realize we don't actually have Easter cookie cutters, only christmas ones, so that's what we used. We finally got them all cut out and baked, (burning the first batch a little) the second batch was perfect...until  I managed to drop them while taking them out of the oven into the crack where the oven door closes.  So funny now, but so not at the time.  Aliya ate about 4 cookies while I was trying to push the cookies through the crack with a spatula and the clean them out of the drawer under the stove.  In the end a basically good time was had at least by Aliya.

Snow day!

A couple of weeks ago we had a really good snow so Daniel and Aliya went out to play in it.  I was watching out the window, where it was nice and warm.  They were having a great time and Daniel decided to build a snowman....unfortunately, it was really wet, heavy snow and he overestimated a little and started WAY too big. So by the time he made the middle section, he couldn't lift it onto the bottom (See picture below).  I was laughing hysterically watching him try to, but finally I took pity and decided to go out and help him. Did I mention the snow was REALLY heavy. We couldn't lift it together either! I'm sure it would have been funny if anyone had been watching us try, but Aliya wasn't even paying attention so we were safe from mocking.  Eventually we gave up and started over with the piece we couldn't lift as the new bottom.  We ended up making the original Giant snowball into a slide for Aliya which turned out awesome! unfortunately I never managed to take a picture of it, it's still sorta there in the backyard even though everything else has melted over a week ago.  It was a great time despite my not wanting to go out.  Aliya was having so much fun she didn't want to come in even though she was cold, tired and hungry.  I had to lure her in with talk of marshmallows. 

All bundled up!

Once there was a snowman...

This was the original begining of the snowman, yeah, turns out we are not He-Man and Sheera..sad day