What in the world?!?!

Okay, I really looked forward to Brad's family coming out because his Aunt Olivia was going to get me some new window treatments. Our window treatments were pretty hideous. She is a master seamstress and was going to make me some handmade gorgeous ones. I was pretty excited. But she stepped in the house, and after gagging at the sight of my wallpaper said that there was no way we could make window coverings without having the color scheme right. I said that we were painting in the fall and had no idea what the color scheme was going to be. Well, that did it. Nothing was going to be done until we picked out colors and had the walls painted. There you have it folks. I am ripping down the much hated wall paper. I can't even tell you how much better it looks! We started this morning, ripped wallpaper ALL DAY LONG and now the entire first level is stripped. Okay, we haven't touched the kitchen yet, but the living and dining room, front entry, and hall up to the bedroom level. Can you say OUCH?! I hurt. My hands hurt, my neck hurts, my shoulders hurt, my legs and feet hurt, I just hurt. But I'm happy. No more ugly wallpaper!!!

Having said all of this, I'm checking out of the blogging world for a while. We have so much we are trying to get done, and I'm going have extremely limited computer time. I really have to get it done before they leave or I will be stuck doing it by myself because Brad will be back at work. Therefore, I'm in work horse mode and not taking many breaks. Rest assured, I'm taking plenty of pictures so you can see the hideous before and the (hopefully) lovely after. I'll keep ya'll posted! See you in a week!

Next project

Just a few pictures of the kiddos on the cookie blog. Nothing too exciting. Stinker eating all of my chocolate. The kids at our neighbor's pool. Our neighbors had a pool party yesterday, and we met some more people on our street. We have such a friendly neighborhood, I never knew who was on my street and who wasn't. People will just stop and talk. I can't keep all of the names straight! We got a couple "Oh, so you're the ones that bought the house on the end of the street" followed by "and cut down all of those beautiful trees..." haha! Why do I feel the need to justify it? They were swarming with ants, too close to the house, eaten by the ash bore or in the way (and don't get me started on the one that apparently fell on the house years before we bought it). We still have 10 trees (not counting the ones behind the shed)! We have a very wooded neighborhood and some people feel that we hurt 'the look' of the area by chopping down 20 trees. Okay, they didn't come out and say that, but they'd comment about all the trees we cut and then a few minutes later say how much they love all of the trees on our street. I can put 2 and 2 together. But they did also say that they liked what we've done with it, so I don't think they are bitter. I just find it amusing, I guess, that they've probably been cursing us under their breath the last year. KIDDING! We had so much fun and everyone was so nice. I love living here. We've already received invites to the Christmas walk-through. I guess they walk from house to house and show off their decorations and trees. Whoa. No pressure Melisa. (Mental note to actually get a tree this year (we've had a 2 ft artificial tree we've been using), put up more than an advent calendar and a string of lights for decoration, and maybe get rid of the ugly wall paper. At least I have 3.5 months to prepare.)

We are hoping to make some progress on this project over the next few weeks. Yikes. Wish us luck. Here is the beginning step: leveling out the ground.

Yes, the hill at the bottom of the picture is the famous 'Killer Wasp' den. Don't worry, the missionaries came over and fixed that problem. Right after eating some of my ornamental Thai chilies and burning their mouths. I haven't seen any killer wasps since.

Wedding pictures

So, the CD is in the mail and I should have it soon. Until then, I stole these off of my brother Jeremy's Facebook page. Not that I need to draw attention to the fact, but it blows my mind how I ended up so short compared to the rest of them. They are all 6 ft or over, and I'm 5 ft 8 in. I need taller heels. They used to call me Frodo, as in a hobbit. At least Brad is tall, so my kids have hope.

Melisa, Tylerr, Jeremy, Travis, Aubrey, Gerrick (in birth order)

With my parents, Travis's wife Resa, Aubrey's husband Benji,

Gerrick's wife Heidi and our adopted brother, Dalan

Rocks in my socks

Stinkerbell doesn't have pockets. So what is a girl to do when she wants to collect rocks? New video up on the cookie blog!

Roo was so cute today. Well, he is cute everyday, but today he really surprised me with his signing. Roo signed a little bit with the deaf lady I talk to at the Y. That was so much fun. Usually my boys freeze when there is someone to sign with. But Roo just started doing sign after sign. And then he said, "Look, mom, she started talking!" I told him that she talked all along, she was just waiting for someone to sign with her. I think he is starting to see the benefits of signing. Yeah!

All Stinker, all the time

New pictures on the cookie blog! You must be thinking that I only take pictures of Stinkerbell. Rest assured, when the boys decide to wear yogurt, I'll take pictures of that too.

Home again

I flew to the wedding on Wed. It was evening by the time I got in, and it was great to see everyone. I saw my grandma, and she had a sling on her arm. I asked her what happened, and she told me that she fell off of an ATV. Now, honestly, how many of you have ATV riding grandmas? I love my family.

That night we went to the movies. It was midnight my time and I was pretty tired, but my family would take no excuses. You wonder why I'm such a night owl, huh. Needless to say, we got to bed pretty late, and were up early to run errands. My mom, brother Travis and I, went to BYU to go to the bookstore. Wow. I was shocked. It looks SO DIFFERENT! I graduated 10 years ago this week, and I can't believe how different it looks! It is a beautiful campus. We spent the rest of the morning going up to Bountiful and meeting some of Heidi's family. We got to help set up a little and it looked awesome (despite how bad we are at making things pretty - we think they fixed everything after we left)! We got a little lost driving around looking for a restaurant for lunch, but we did have some fun. My sister Aubrey, SIL Resa, and my Aunt VaLynn and I all went to get pedicures. It was lots of fun, though Resa's lady was a little aggressive with her toes. :)

After pedis, it was get dressed and head to the temple for the wedding. It was beautiful. Of course, I cried through it. I've never seen Gerrick more smitten. It was wonderful to see. After that was lots of pictures. Lots. Then we went over to finish last minute preps for the reception. The reception was beautiful too. My dad's mom and his sisters Janielle, Claudia, and Shelly were able to make it.

It was pretty late when we got in that night, but we were up by 6:30 so we could go to the Provo temple. I never got to go while I was at the Y. After that it was up to SLC to catch my plane. Quick trip, huh! And can you believe that I only have 1 picture of the whole trip? Seriously. I got a picture with my friend Syd here in MI. She took me to the airport and picked me up even though she incredibly busy with a party coming up today. What a doll. Of course, the real reason I wanted her to take me is because I wanted to snuggle her sweet baby! Such a cutie pie! Her older kids are such cuties too. I wish we could see them more, but considering we are both married to doctors, electronic correspondence fits our schedules much easier. And don't worry, I asked VaLynn to send me a CD of the "official" wedding pictures, so I'll get those up eventually. For now, I put up my single picture of the trip and a couple I found of Stinkerbell on my camera while I was in UT.

These are more appropriate for this blog though:

Wedding!

My youngest brother is getting married this week! Wow. It is almost surreal. So, no posts for awhile. I'll be in UT until Friday. I'll probably take lots of pictures there though!

Camping!

We just love camping. There is a wonderful lake near us that we go to. Our church ward had a campout there this weekend. We had a blast. We also realized that our old tent is not made for a family of 5. Hopefully we can get a new one soon! One that can fit in some air mattresses! My side is killing me! :)

The pictures and some videos are on the cookie blog (first link under the links heading). Be warned, there are a lot of pictures! And there is even a video of the boys signing to the Silly Pizza Song. Crazy kids. My house is a mess, but you know I'm keepin' it real at least!

In regards to the cookie blog, if I know you and you are reading this, I would love it if you would like to look at it. It isn't meant to keep out people we know, just the ones we don't. I don't want to assume everyone I know would want to see a plethora of pictures. I'm not trying to push the whole "private blog" on ya'll. So, if you want to see the kiddos in all their cuteness, just email me and let me know. And for the record, a few people have come out and claimed "odd searches" to find my blog. And it wasn't any of them. It was whoever is in NY and made the search in a foreign language. I'm just putting that out there so you can stop wondering if you are the one who freaked me out. :)

The beast

Okay, so today I got some video of the cicada killer wasp. He was taking a cicada into his hole when we got back from the Y today. I couldn't find my camera and by the time I got back, I couldn't see the cicada anymore. I'm not sure if this is the same wasp or another one. Ugh. Another one. Ugh.

Enjoy the videos and listening to me freak out. :)

This is the side yard that we haven't worked on yet. It has been a dumping ground for all of our construction materials, bricks, dirt, rocks, etc. We hope to work on it the end of August. You can see the fence in the back.
Lovely isn't it. The dirt mound is where the wasps live. Ugh. I told Brad that finishing the side yard just moved up on my priority list.
A diagram of the lot. The circle in the bottom corner is the hosta garden and the one next to the house is the circle garden with the plants. Somewhere I have a diagram that includes the retaining walls and sidewalks, but I don't know where it is right now. The part I shaded at the top is what the above pictures are taken from.

In other news, did anyone catch Stephenie Meyer's signing broadcast last night? I stayed up late to watch it and it was FABULOUS! Let me know if you did so we can chat about it. And if you read the Meridian article with letters to the Editor about it, let me know too. I just have to say that wow, some people are really against it. Won't even read it because it is so evil. Alrighty then.

Scary!

Okay, this freaky looking bug has made a home next to my driveway and it FREAKS ME OUT! Today I saw it dragging a cicada into its hole. I couldn't ever get a picture on camera, because it appears to be camera shy. I'm going to keep trying. FREAKY!

Here is a link to some pictures. The thing is massive. Massive. It looks like a wasp, but it is the size of my thumb! Ugh!

http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=cicada%20killer%20wasps&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi

Quick pix

Just some pictures of Stinker up on the Cookie blog. She was too dang cute to resist. Sorry they are so late, mom!

New blog and new hair cut

Okay, I finally decided that the best solution (for me) to the picture and video problem (see a couple posts down if you have no clue what I'm talking about) is to go ahead and have a separate blog for pix and vids. So, if you want words and boring pictures of me or the house, you can look at this blog. If you don't want to read much, just look at the pictures of the kids *cough*mom*cough* then you can just look at that blog. But, it is private, so if you want to check it out, you'll have to let me know. Just email me or leave me a comment. Thanks! I will only update that one when I have new pictures, and I'll warn you on this one if I do put up something new.

And, here are the boring pictures. If you want the pictures of the kids with the squirrel or Stinkerbell in a tiara, you'll have to go to the other one. Sorry. I know it is a pain that I now have 2 boring blogs, but I couldn't think of a better solution. I want to keep it public so anyone can see what we are up too, but keep the kids pictures and such private because you never know.

*Update* Okay, looks like I am already getting things confused. I accidentally put up the squirrel slide instead of the fence one. Sheesh. This could get confusing. Be patient with me! :)

True before and after (sans make up)

I know I just did a whole post about how I'm not from Los Alamos, but since they aren't coming out with a White Rock shirt any time soon, this one will work great to remind me of home. This was a shirt, by the way. I went ahead and framed it. THANKS MOM!

Breaking Dawn - updated with pictures!

Okay, I'm officially back in the world of the living. I turned my ringer back on. That last part is a joke actually, as I never got a chance to turn it off as Brad was working until 6 tonight. Anyway, I finished the book awhile ago, and it was of course, AWESOME! So, if anyone else is done and wants to talk about it, let me know! :) I don't want to call and bug anyone in case they are still reading.

***UPDATE #2*** I've gotten a couple of emails asking how I finished so fast. Well, for one thing, I'm a really quick reader. For another thing, I'm a night owl by nature. I started about 12:30 am and didn't sleep until 7:30 am. That is 7 hours of uninterrupted reading (if you don't count poor Brad's pager going off a bunch). Then I slept until the kids got up at 9. Got them cereal and read until lunch when I made them PB&J. Brad took them out to dinner when he got home at 6, so I didn't have to worry about that. I rented some movies at Blockbuster and pretty much let the boys watch movies and play computer all day. They did great for the most part. Stinkerbell spent most of the time she was awake in my bed with me, either on my lap or reading her own books. The only things I ate all day were leftover cookies from Max and Erma's and 2 ham and cheese lunchables. I traded days with Mark so I wouldn't have to teach my Sunday School class today. (This was before I got released today. And for the record, I did not ask for the trade, he did since he will be gone next week.)

***UPDATE*** I went and read some reviews on the book, and I have to say that I really don't agree. Stephenie is not out there to teach young women how to be independent and be their own person before they get married. She is writing a story about a dream she had of 2 people. 2. This is Edward's story just as much as Bella's even if he isn't the narrator. She is writing a love story. If you don't like love stories, then this probably isn't something you would enjoy. Do I like stories where everything ties up nicely with a nice little bow? As a matter of fact I DO!! I really hated that HP killed off some of my favorite characters. I like happy stories. Happy endings. Tied up story lines. Happily ever after. I tend to avoid sad. I don't like sad. There is quite enough in the world, thank you very much. Give me happy endings any day. And of course some of the book is far fetched. Hello! It's a vampire story for crying out loud. What isn't far fetched about any of it?!

Me and Shan at the party with our tiaras!

My loot. Tiara and bracelet, necklace, button, stickers, and chocolate.

Yes, the tiara was silly, but you have to admit this necklace is pretty fun.

Sorry for the interruption

If you happened to check in the last day or so, you might have noticed that the blog was set to private. I'm not really going private, I just needed to take it down really fast without deleting the blog and starting over, and it was the quickest way I could think of.

To make a long story short, because my blog is public, I have a site tracker on so I can see who is looking at my stuff. A week or so ago, I noticed that someone found my site using some suspicious word searches (not bad, just suspicious depending on how you look at it). I watched for other hits from that person, to see if it was someone I knew. Well, when I checked again yesterday, that person was back using the same search words. I decided to take it down so that I would have time to remove all of the pictures and videos of the kids and any links to them. (I think I got them all). I hope that at some point in the very near future I will have a place for pictures and videos on our secure, password protected server. Or maybe I'll have a blog link that is private for just pictures and videos of the kids. I'm just not sure yet. I do know that I'm not going to have time to do it for awhile as a certain book is coming out tonight that takes precedence over blogging.

If you don't mind, it would ease my mind if every once in a great while you would leave me a comment to let me know who you are, so I know that you are someone I know and trust. Sorry to sound like paranoid mom, but my kiddies come first!