Cute bag

This is the picture of the bag I made a little while ago. I'll be teaching the girls in my ward how to make on at an enrichment activity. I made it from a placemat and it was really easy.Instructions are on my profi frau blog.

Freecycle

Okay, so my new ward here has a freecycle list for things that people want to get rid of that others may want. I thought it was a pretty good idea and then I found out that yahoo has a site called freecycle.org. Some of you may already know and love this site, but I thought I would pass the word along to others who may be clueless like I am. It works like Craig's list, only everything is free. Of course you wouldn't want EVERYTHING on there, but who doesn't love the occasional awesome thing for FREE.

One note. Emails come in as things become available, so if you don't want a lot of emails I think you can choose to just look at the message board when you want to.

How DOES your gardner grow?

I thought today might be a good day to give an update on all of us.

Today is Justin's first day of school. He had work this morning and then has a class this evening. We have LOVED having him around so much for the last month and already miss him. On top of school, Justin has a position as a research assistant/class assistant and a job with the Dean of the veterinary college doing some accounting type work. The work is a blessing and should keep Justin busy. (but hopefully not too busy).I heard a story yesterday of a vet that told one of his technicians that he didn't know they had had two kids during vet school until he graduated. (So silly).
Today marks 20 weeks for me- halfway there. Along with my belly growing, I've felt my appetite really picking up. We are hoping to find out what we are having next week, so stay tuned.


This is our "cheeser". She has been quite the handful the last few days. Yesterday at church she was really acting up. Justin and I looked at her and said, "do you need to go outside?" in a threatening tone. She smiled back and said, "yeah, I do". How did she get so cheeky?
This was today while Gracie and I were watching Sesame street. I just loved how she was lounged on the couch with her pretty shoes and curly hair. Oh, and she's also biting her lip. Babe- a- licious.

Phase 10

The other day it was raining and we were BORED to tears. We decided to play phase 10. This is about how it went down:
J- Remind me again how you play this
M- It's really easy. All you do is try to get what the card tells you for the phase you're on AND the first one to lay down wins.

Well, Gracie didn't lose any time and before we really knew what was happening, Gracie was lying down on the floor. I guess she won. It was pretty cute.

Let's call the whole thing off

"You say tomato, I say tomahtoe..." I love that song, but don't you think that's sometimes awkward? We have really nice neighbors who invited us over for dinner. We had a great time. The husband is from Missouri and the I think the wife is from Michigan. Anyway, the husband was telling me how he lived in Utah for a little while working at All-ta ski resort. (*time out* did he just say All-ta? Everyone in Utah calls it Alta... including me).

This is a situation where you don't want to make a big deal about the pronunciation but you also don't feel comfortable using their pronunciation so you both just continue the conversation using different pronunciations. I personally think it feels a little weird, almost like you're correcting each other.

Other examples of this are when people say
Ont instead of Ant (aunt)
ahmen instead of aymen (amen)
Colorahdo instead of Colorado
You get the picture.

To tell the truth, I think that the way people from the East speak sounds more sophisticated but I can't quite adopt it. Sometimes I do cave in and say Ahmen if the person saying the prayer said it. What do or do you not pronounce differently to fit in, or what new and different words do you find people around you using?

My Olympic top five

Here are the top reasons why you might hate watching the Olympics with me:
5) I fall asleep on the couch shortly after 9pm and then ask Justin to recap everything that happened while I was asleep.
4) I wish for bad things to happen to people from other countries so that my country can take gold (Women's gymnastics was bad, "please fall, China").
3) I say, "that's incredible" about once a minute.
2) During half of the events I ask Justin if they are seriously real events (I don't remember trampoline being an event)
1) I get super emotional (I hope I can blame it on being pregnant). I tear up during almost every interview of an Olympian and when people win medals because I'm so proud of people achieving their dreams

GO OLYMPIANS!!!
.

My little helper

This is Gracie "helping" me in the kitchen. She is such a cutie and always says, "I want see" when I am cooking things. She also insists on wearing an apron every time I do (which I've been doing more now that my belly is starting to poke out more). The last month has been really fun to watch Gracie as her vocabulary has grown tremendously, and then as she has started to put sentences together. She can repeat most words and we love that she can communicate (minus all of her "I don't want it"s).

Gracie's favorite drink is noke (milk). She hates to be caught without her blanket, and we think that she might one day become an Olympic gymnast. She loves candy and is better than I am at finding it.

Disclaimer

Hey, We just got the internet yesterday and I have been trying to catch up. I did want to note that I'm probably including stuff that you might not care much about. I mostly just want to feel like I've recorded some stuff about some of these events. Feel free to skip past the boring things, and don't be disappointed if it all looks boring :)

Lory State Park

There's a state park about 15 minutes from our house. They have horse trails and also hiking and mountain biking trails. We ate our dinner there the other night and then went for a hike/ horseback ride. Gracie and I walked by Justin who was on horseback and then we split up and met at the truck. Gracie hiked a long way by herself. It was great for me because I felt like I could let her explore and just relax (Something that I can't do when we're walking on the road).
Justin and Chip.
I'm not sure why I didn't get the whole truck and trailer, but thought this might give you a feel for things.

Walker Family Reunion

Soon after we got here, we got word of the Walker family reunion which took place about a week after we got here. Walker Mowers (the kind of riding lawn mowers that Gardner Lawn Mowing uses) are manufactured here and so we decided to go to this big celebration over at the plant. It was a little bit crazy.
There were tons of walker employees, dealers, and owners/operators at the reunion. There were people there from Germany, Holland, Spain, Italy, Australia, Switzerland, Denmark, and people from all over the country. We felt a little funny being there with all the others who took it a lot more seriously but had a ball.
My favorite conversation we had was with the Germans. I had to keep asking them how to say words because my missionary vocabulary didn't include the word lawn mower (and other lawn mowing words), and it took me a minute to get into the groove of speaking "auf Deutsch."
Lastly, we enjoyed concerts by Pam Tillis (Maybe it was Memphis), and Aaron Tippin (You've got to stand for something or you'll fall for anything). Anyway, it was fun.

Home sweet home

The house we are renting. Our yard, garage, and driveway- to give you a better feel.

Our kitchen and back door.
Kitchen/ laundry room
Dining/ Office area looking into the living room.
Living room looking into the dining/office area. Our bedroom (yes, it is as small as it looks)
The bathroom.
Gracie's room- including her "big girl bed"

Rocky Mountain High

Well, it has been a crazy few weeks. On July 22nd we picked up our Uhaul, loaded up everything in our storage unit, and spent the next few days making our final preparations to move and packed the rest of our stuff in Pine Valley. We also said our final goodbyes to friends and family (wish that was a little easier). Early on the 25th we were on the road. Larry (Justin's dad) drove the Uhaul and towed my little Sentra and Justin and Gracie and I rode together in the truck and hauled a horse behind us.
We arrived in Fort Collins at about 9pm, just as it was getting dark and starting to rain. We took out our beds and a few things for the night and decided to unload in the morning. We realized in the course of the evening that the place we were planning on renting was not going to work. It was a little smaller than I had hoped, but the real surprise was the smell of the apartment. Let's just say that it felt a little more like we were living in a corral. The apartment was just a lot more connected to the animal stalls than we were led to believe.
The next day was crazy. Not only did we have to talk to our landlords about getting out of our lease, but we spent the ENTIRE day searching for a new apartment to live in. We felt sick knowing that we had a Uhaul full of stuff, a lease to get out of, and no place to live. About 6pm we found a house for rent. We called the landlord and he basically told us we where the hide-a-key was and gave us permission (at our request) to move in that day...which we did. The place we are renting is a 2 bedroom house on an acre of property with a fenced yard. the back half of the yard is fenced off for a horse and has a loafing shed and corral area. Needless to say, we feel blessed to have a place to live that smells pleasant and feels like home.