Emily Quote

After throwing a crazy 15 minute fit in time out...

Me, "Why were you throwing a fit?"

Emily, "Because you ruined my day!"

Get used to it kid!

It's Windy

I decided this morning that if I were an arsonist, I wouldn't even have to follow the weather reports or look outside to see how windy it was to know when it's a good fire starting day.  All I'd need to do is wake up and see if my head was already about to explode from bad allergies. Needless to say, today the world should be grateful I only like lighting things like candles on fire!  :)

Ahhhhh

I assume my huge sigh of relief was heard around the world Friday afternoon, that's when I finished painting the kitchen cabinets!  It took a couple weeks of doing a little section at a time several days a week, and it was well worth it.  The kitchen just feels a little more put together and refreshed now with the walls and cabinets painted over.  Here are the before and afters!

Old worn out looking kitchen cabinets:

It's amazing what a little paint can do:

It's kinda hard to tell we painted the walls and ceiling in these dining room pictures:

It started with the shoes...

I've been wondering when this phase was going to start.  I think she's waited longer than most kids for it.  She's never been one of those kids to request really strange wardrobe choices other than when she's playing with her dress up clothes...but for now, it starts with the shoes. :)  Monday she was very proud to be in her bright yellow oversized t-shirt and jeans (with holes in the knees of course), then to add her red socks and navy blue mary jane type shoes to finish off her ensemble.

Then this morning she continued her creativity with a cute polo shirt, jeans (you know it, with holes in the knees), regular socks, then her pretty red shoes with bows and sequins that she wore with her flower girl dress in the wedding.

I think it's hilarious!  There's definitely no reason for me to suggest she do otherwise right now, I have way more important things to argue over with her already.  I'm just curious to see where it will go from here!

Just A Little Update

There's not a whole lot to update on lately, things have been pretty normal around here.  Alex was sick all last week and I've just been painting the kitchen cabinets a little bit at a time.  They're turning out so nice though, it's amazing the difference a little paint can make!

Emily's swim lessons are going ok.  She's been paranoid about water getting in eyes for as long as I can remember so we got her some goggles and that seems to have helped slightly so far.  She'll get a little better each lesson.

Sunday Emily and I got out with some great friends of mine (Cheri and Tracy) that I met when I lived in Okinawa.  I love that we're still in contact and both living in Southern California now, they're the best!!  They have two little girls, I think they're 6 and 2 1/2, so we met up at Disneyland to let the girls burn off some steam.  It was fun even though it was VERY crowded!  We ended up at California Adventure because of the crowds and Emily and I went on the Toy Story ride for the first time, it's great!!  I forgot my camera (of course) but snapped this one of Makenzie and Emily on the carousel:

So last year I grew my hair out for a long time to make sure it was long enough to do something pretty with for our wedding.  It ended up pretty dead at the ends after that so on our honeymoon I cut a few inches off to give it some bounce and make it healthy again.  Then yesterday I decided it was just at that awkward frumpy feeling stage and I didn't feel like growing it out yet so I had a few more inches cut off today. :)  I always love how free my neck feels after getting the weight of longer hair cut off of it!  Here's a badly lit web cam picture of it:

That's all for now!

Wedding Pictures

I'm sure everybody has the link by now, but just in case you don't here is the link to the only wedding pictures the photographer gave us.  I'll try to remember to make a big online album soon with the pictures we got from everybody else's cameras as well!

Go make yourself useful

The time has come! Well the time has really come and gone and come again for me to find a job. I tried on my own during the later summer months and didn't get anywhere, then it got too close to the wedding and I stopped for a bit. Now that my name is changed and the new year is here it's hunting time again. I hate job hunting (not that anybody likes it)! The anxiety that comes along with trying to sell myself in interviews and having to learn a whole new system at a new office is rough.

Along with hunting myself on craigslist, monster and career builder, I went in to AppleOne last week. I got to fill out a lovely half our long online application before I went, then went in and filled out some more paperwork, took some safety and basic clerical test, and had my interview with my "staffing consultant". After that they email you a link with, surprise, MORE tests to take! Of course they wouldn't work on the mac we had at home so over the weekend Alex let me go to his work and use one of the computers there to take my four tests. So, after all that, all I can do is sit and wait really. I keep looking on my sites and sending in my resume to places I find and the person at AppleOne keeps her eye out for companies that sign up through them and sends my resume out. The job market really sucks right now, even for just a receptionist/office assistant...wish me luck!!

At least I'd go down fighting

I could survive for 51 seconds chained to a bunk bed with a velociraptor

Date Night

Alex and I had a date night last night. My fabulous in-laws got us tickets to Stomp for Christmas with free babysitting included, it was fun! We went out to a very yummy Italian dinner first, complete with appetizers, main course, and dessert (yum!). Then we headed to the show and enjoyed being entertained by these very talented people. It's just amazing what you can do with normal every day items! I'll never look at a bucket, lighter, or even a trash bag the same again. :)

Swimming

I was so excited for Saturday to come because it meant taking Emily to her first swim lesson!  She got a certificate for a full session (once a week for 8 weeks) for her birthday and I finally remembered to call last week to schedule her.  She didn't know a whole lot about what it meant and actually thought we'd be going to the pool at Grandpa Nick's house, but after I explained that we were going somewhere new so she could try and swim like some of her cousins she was even more excited.  Her lessons are at this great sports center for kids where they have swimming, gymnastics, dance, and some other stuff.  She's already showing interest in doing some of the other activities there after swimming is over.

Anyway, she did really good for her first time and didn't cry at all!  Her biggest obstacle is that she has a huge problem with getting her eyes and ears wet, it freaks her out!  She had a lot of fun and said she liked it, but since the teacher forced her to put her head under water a couple of times (in the nicest way, I promise!) she said she didn't want to go again.  Then on the way out she got a lollipop and decided that of course she wants to go next week!

Kitchen Drama and Random Pictures

This is our kitchen.  We've been talking big about painting the walls and sanding/painting the cabinets for months now to make it look a little more up to date, and a couple of weeks ago we finally started acting on it!

(Before)

We were the perfect paint pickers, going by the book...we went to Lowes and looked at a bunch of sample cards, bought a sample of the paint, and put a patch of it on every wall in the room and left it up for about a week to make sure we liked it after it dried and in every different lighting situation.  We ended up liking the color, it was this dark brownish-beige and should look great with the dark chocolate brown we're doing the cabinets and the red curtains, so we went and got a gallon of the same exact thing and went to work!  You can imagine our dismay when after all of that to do we painted about 1/4 of our kitchen and realized it was going on PINK!  So we finished up what we were doing and said we shouldn't judge it til the next day when we saw it dry a little darker and in different lighting and whatnot.  Nope, still very pink!

The next day I took the faulty gallon back to Lowes and had a very nice chat with the manager which ended with him telling me to pick out a whole new color for free farther down on the brown-beige spectrum so we avoid the pink incident again :)  The new color was a success and half of our kitchen is painted, yay!  I'll post more progress pictures next week and hopefully we'll start the cabinets next weekend too so I can show the final product.

Now that I'm done rambling on about pink paint, here are some random pictures from this week...

Emily got some new dress up clothes for Christmas so she decided to try some on and give me a little fake performance with some twirls and microphone action:

Alex was in the kitchen making his famous deep-dish pizza while Emily was performing.  Naturally when he realized I was taking pictures he ran in to show off some dough tossing for the camera:

One afternoon I was tired of seeing a curtain of hair in front of Emily's beautiful eyes so I stuck it up in a bun.  She was so excited and made sure to tell me how much she loved her "round ponytail"!