2nd trimester "Bliss"

For those of you that may not know, the first trimester of this pregnancy pretty much kicked my butt. I was pretty sick and was able to accomplish only what really HAD to be done, and sometimes not even that. Alas my New Years resolution to blog more fell victim and died. But thank you to my second trimester where I am feeling SOOOOOO much better!! So, here are some pics to catch everyone up with the last few months. 

Valentine's day!

Coloring Easter Eggs w/ Nellie and Sophi.

Easter Egg hunt at Grandma Price's house. Alex is a big boy so he had to show Luke the ropes of easter egg hunting: find egg, place in basket. Luke caught on, but preferred his own method:  find egg, take to grandpa to open, put in mouth.

And Thanksgiving dinner. Meet Butterball and Tyson, the newest (although temporary) addition to our family. We thought it would be fun to raise our own Thanksgiving this year, so we bought a couple baby turkeys and are going to spend the next 6 months seeing how fat we can get them! Don't worry Christine, Alex already has a pretty good grasp on death and that many animals are dinner (like Roz's cows named hamburger and things of that nature...  :o) So it should be a pretty good time. We are told with the proper 'meat' feed we can get those suckers up to 60 lbs. by Thanksgiving!! 

I love this pic because Luke totally photo bombed it! 

Anyway, that's all I have for now I think. Oh! Except that Jeff has his graduation ceremony in 2 weeks and we are pretty excited!! I know he's been done with school for nearly 5 months now and has his diploma and everything... but actual graduation makes it feel so official! I'll post pics since I WILL be doing better about blogging again!

A JOB!!

Jeff got a job! Actually 2 jobs! The main job is an Admission Counselor at Stevens Henager College. He'll be recruiting new students and helping them through the entire admissions process. It's full time salary with good pay and benefits and makes us finally feel like adults! The 2nd is a part time swim coach for the Idaho Falls swim club. He has to certify as a coach for USAA swimming, then he will start working with kids from ages 2-18, and is one of only a few coaches with actual swimming experience. We are pretty excited about both, and can't wait for him to start. We drove to Salt Lake yesterday to the Park City outlet malls and bought him a new wardrobe full of slacks, button ups and ties. So professional! We left Alex here with Jill to play with PJ and Loralito all day, but we took Luke on the drive with us. Let me tell you what, he is the BEST baby ever! 3 hour drive up there, 5 hours of shopping, 3 hour drive home... he didn't cry once. He just goes with the flow and as long as he's got someone to play with he is perfect. I couldn't ask for more!
     Earlier I had a whole list of updates to give everyone, but now that I finally sat down to type them I seem to be distracted by The Iron Giant (one of my favorite cartoons ever...) It seems I have lost all memory of whatever else it was I needed to share. At least I remembered the job part, since that is the most important one anyway right? I suppose when I remember the rest I will post more.

No good reason...

Other than the fact that it's funny.

a few random things...

Leanne is here this weekend making an appearance (yea!) so we went to lunch on Saturday with the whole gang. Over our lunch discussions she said she thought that I should post/pin the gift that I made her kids for Christmas this year. I am actually a little surprised that I haven't yet, because I am quite proud of them. So, here they are.....

Somehow I ended up without a picture of Marci's, not sure how that happened.... so you can see hers in the top left of this final pic. They were so fun to make, they hardest part was deciding on a theme for each kid. Marci was easy, her room is a beach theme and you don't get much more California girl than her. Garrett's I messed with for a long time trying to incorporate the actual instruments he plays into his. That got to be too much and I didn't like any of the designs, so I just did a basic staff. Chloe I tossed back and forth between singing and soccer... soccer won. Liam and grant, the hardest part was deciding who got guns and who got motorcycles, either way would have worked. Charly was easy, cute and pink, just like her. I got the idea for these from here, but you can see that mine ended up pretty much nothing like hers. But I love them just the same.
   Another random thing. I have decided I am over cooking. Not too shocking really. I do really well for a while and will cook everything and I'm so domestic it's crazy. Then I am over it for a while. I'm currently in the 'over it' stage. So here is my new solution. CROCK POT! For the next week I am going to make every dinner in the crock pot in the morning, dish it up at night. Easy peasy right? Roz lent me a crock pot cooking magazine and some of the recipes look great. I'll let you know how it goes!
   Random # 3. If you haven't yet, you must check out www.worldbooknight.org      It's program running in April to deliver 1 million books to non-readers throughout the nation. Check it out! Sign up to be a deliverer! 
  Random #4. Also book related, if you don't yet use the website GoodReads you probably ought to check that out also. Sign up for the 2012 reading challenge (I have set my goal for at least 12 books this year...) then friend me so I can see what you are reading! 
   That's about all the randomness I have in me for now. Later!

2012 Julia

For those of you that don't live here in good old Idaho Falls, you probably have not yet heard me chanting my new mantra. I should probably actually say mantras as it changes from day to day, but the purpose is always the same. This is the year I am better. Better at everything, including but not limited to: more organized, better mother, better wife, healthier, more fit, blog more, craft more, read more etc. etc... I know, overwhelming right? Nope, 'cuz in the spirit of being more organized, I have a plan! Jeff and I both (his might have been a little bit against his will) typed up New Years Resolutions addressing everything we wanted to fix/improve/begin this year. Then they got filed in my new "family binder" that organizes all the stuff that used to collect on my counter tops. Fancy right? So I have decided that you guys get to take this journey with me. Starting with the 52 week organization challenge. For those of you that have not seen the pin on Pinterest I have started this challenge: http://tinyurl.com/6m7lpv4  This week was 'pantry.' Oh man did I need this one! Don't believe me? Check it out....

 Jeff looked at those picture and pointed out that they are quite possible the BEST before pictures ever. I mean really, it's can't get any worse than that right? Honestly, I'm a little embarrassed showing them. My defense: Luke and Alex have recently decided that the pantry is their favorite place to play since it has a swinging door, hours of entertainment apparently. And since I knew it was coming up on the challenge I pretty much gave up on picking up after them. It may also be possible that I just started tossing stuff in there since there was no chance of finding it's assigned place anyway. I know, I know, it's a pretty weak defense, but it's the only one I've got. 
  So, to the cleaning. I decided if I was going to do it I was going to do it right. When we moved it and renovated the kitchen we completely ignored the pantry. So I emptied it out:

(I just tossed everything into the kitchen...)

made Jeff paint it (I helped a little)

Then moved everything back in, in a MUCH more organized fashion.

As you can see, Luke has not stopped terrorizing it yet. He loves that he once again has ground to run on in there! And I have sooooooo much more room, look at how many empty shelves I suddenly have! Next week is the fridge, finally an easy one!!

First Haircut!

Yup, you read right, Luke got his first haircut today! Poor kid had a mullet and the top was so long it either tipped over his 'hawk or hung in his eyes. So today when I was done getting my hair cut/colored Jeff brought him over and Nellie hooked him up. Before:

After:

A whole new kid! I know it's bragging, but man he's cute! Also, I know I have been slacking on the 30 day photo challenge, so I'm going to act like I didn't skip a few days and just move right along onto day 5. Day 5 was 'someone you love,' so I'm killing 2 birds with one stone and using Luke's haircut pics as the one I love also. It's not cheating, I promise.

How could you not love that face? Thanks Nellie for doing an awesome job!

I forgot!

Christine's STATS post just reminded me that I never posted Luke's stats from his 1 year visit yesterday. He is 31.5" tall (96%) and 24 lbs 5 oz (90%) Built like an ox and healthy as ever!