30

i turned 30.

last weekend.

i saw one of my girlfriends today and she asked me if i freaked out about it at all. but i was excited to turn 30. 

as soon as i woke up on my birthday i sent a text to a friend and said that i woke up smarter and sexier. in my little brain that magic number transformed me into something better. it's all in my head of course, but there's some awesome things that go on in my head.

in reality it's not the number that has had any effect on me. it's just the confidence that comes with maturity and the happiness that comes when you truly figure out who you are and what drives you. 

and in all honesty, i did a lot of really stupid stuff in my early 20's and it feels good to know that i'm not that person anymore.

jackson and his cute little face

look at those cute little freckles he's getting on his nose :)

sometimes i sit around and wonder what life would be like right now if i'd made just a couple different choices in my early years. it can be fun sometimes to imagine a life that could've been. but it's always the little things that bring me back to reality.

those cute little freckles on his nose. his skinny legs and knobby knees. how he farts uncontrollably when he laughs.

reality is much better than anything i dream up in my head.

temporary contentment

this is the time of year when i'm at peace with utah. the sky is blue. there's no inversion. the mountains are still green. and you don't melt away or freeze your butt off the second you walk out the door. 

i used to think i need 4 distinct seasons each year. i needed the extremes of winter and summer. 

now that i know better, i know that i don't need winter or summer at all. just the calm in between. 

so now, where do i go to find it??

the boy who couldn't boil a noodle

do you teach your kids to cook? 

i had a boy babysit the boys for me last year. he was 13 so i just assumed he could do basic cooking. i had leftover spaghetti sauce so i said for dinner he could just boil some spaghetti and microwave the sauce. 

but he didn't know how to boil spaghetti. 

so i got out some hot dogs and said he could microwave them for dinner. and i had the popcorn popper out so they could have popcorn while they watched a movie.

i came home to find out that he had no idea how to use an air-popper, and they ate cold hot dogs for dinner. 

and they almost started a fire trying to figure out how to use the air-popper.

i thought back to my childhood and couldn't remember a time when i wasn't cooking things for myself. i was 4 when my brother started paying me a quarter to make him popcorn. i believe i was 7 when i started baking all my siblings birthday cakes. by 6 i could at least make noodles, grilled cheese sandwiches and fry, poach & scramble eggs, and make a killer chocolate chip cookie.

after that incident i realized having the boys in the kitchen with me was more than just a fun activity. i'm determined to raise boys that know how to cook everything that i can cook. 

i can't tell you how nice it is to sleep in on saturdays and not have to worry about breakfast because jackson is in the kitchen happily making toast and scrambled eggs.

teach your boys to cook!

(i was in the kitchen on mothers day happily baking some brownies, when payton came in wanting to share the load so i could enjoy my day.)

a beautiful, beautiful flamingo

they call me the wanderer

i try to not be a complainer. i think it's important to be positive about your circumstances no matter what they are. but darn it if i don't complain about life sometimes. there are just days when you wish you could trade places with someone who is living a more exotic life, or at least one moderately different than your own.

today was a day where i kind of just wandered around aimlessly. i thought about taking payton to the park. then ended up at the yarn store. meandered over to cafe rio. then found myself at the other end of the valley 40 minutes from home.

i wasn't sad or mad. i was just.....going through the very basic motions of life. but i looked out over the valley and just thought "life's pretty dang good."

happiness is a tricky thing

i follow a blog called the wild and wily ways of a brunette bombshell. you wouldn't believe what an amazing writer this woman is. She can write about something that i don't relate to in any way, but i find myself totally feeling the emotion and it wakes up something deep inside me. 

it sounds corny, i know. but for reals, this chick is amazing.

sometimes she writes about the eating disorder that she's struggled with and part of what she wrote today totally spoke to me.

happiness is a tricky thing, wouldn't you say? it's always somewhere else. over there. contingent upon when i's and if i's and the like. for me, for so long, it was well, when i'm thin, if i ever get thin then i'll be happy. i won't feel sadness, i won't feel anxious...i won't have to worry about sidelong glances from this person or that person, i won't have to fear. 


i won't have to fear. 


that was probably the big one. thin would eradicate all the ills of my life. it would be the plateau on which i would coast.


here's the thing.


thin does none of those things. absolutely not one. don't get me wrong, it has its advantages, but it does not heal relationships--it doesn't heal the part of yourself that is so hurting and broken--the part of you that becomes co-conspirator in this fallacy so that it gets left alone to fester and brood.

see. she's good. 

i spend so much time thinking about how great life will be when i'm as thin as i was when i met nate. but if i think that nothing can be better unless i'm thin then not only will things never get better, but i'll also never get thin like i want to be. 

so check out her blog.

greatest hits

sometimes i miss those days when you HAD to develop photos in order to see them. granted, half of those developed photos ended up looking like shiz, but at least they were there. they existed in a physical form that you could touch and carry with you.

too many wonderful photos live on my computer and have been forgotten. though with my new mac they seem much more accessible. i've been going through all of our photos and brightening them up. therein lies the beauty of digital photography. those photos that would've turned out dark and lackluster after being developed can now be given new life through the magic of photoshop.

now i just need to commit to developing those photos that have been given a new lease on life.

here are some of my faves, many of which have been seen on here before...

the good ol' days

i walked past an old ford bronco the other day. i'm one of those people that glances in the windows real quick. i'm not a thief checking for goods, i'm just a little curious. inside this bronco there was a stack of old cassette tapes and an old school tape deck with a tape sticking out of it. when was the last time you saw cassette tapes in regular every day use? 

it totally made my day.

then it got me reminiscing about the good old days.

i was in heaven when i was in 5th grade and got my very own alarm clock radio with a cassette player. i rode my bike down to IGA and bought some blank cassettes and i was ready to go! fully equipped to record any song that came on the radio. every night i would anxiously wait until 9:00 for the "hot 9 at 9" so i could record all the songs. when a couple friends started getting cd players and few years later i thought "this is never gonna catch on. why would you want a cd when you can record any song you want to a cassette straight from the radio?" but eventually i jumped on the cd bandwagon. before long we were all burning mixes for best friends and boyfriends. i still have bunch of them. remember how long it used to take to burn a cd? i remember spending almost an entire saturday at a friends house making a mix for my boyfriend. it took FOREVER!!!!

i don't feel like i'm old enough to be saying this, but can you believe how things have changed over the years? We didn't have internet in my house until i was a freshman. that was 1998. i had a cell phone senior year that was only capable of making and receiving calls. no texts. no voicemail. nothing. now i have everything at my fingertips with one tiny little device. pretty much everything i need is in my iphone. thus explaining the picture of old cds spread across the floor. they haven't been used in years. i was getting ready to throw them out when the boys found them and starting playing with them. my first reaction was to say "NO, YOU'LL SCRATCH THEM!" but caught myself and let them have their fun.

here's to the good ol' days :)

devil woman

i haven't been around much lately. 

and that's a good thing.

because if you'd been around me lately you'd have seen my grumpy alter ego that doesn't like people and doesn't care about people.

i think it was just the culmination of a million things at once. i'm pretty sure it started when my air conditioner went out. am i the only one who turns into a beast when it's too hot??? my personality literally changes when it's too hot. 

i think the other thing is something only a military wife can understand. maybe not though. my husband was gone for almost two years. that's a long time. i didn't realize until he got home how comfortable i was with him being gone. not in a bad way. i'm not saying i'm not happy having him home. i'm incredibly happy to have him back. it's just become very apparent how independent i got and how important MY schedule became to my general attitude. i got used to sleeping alone. so did he. it's weird sharing a bed again.

it's been a time of a lot of adjustments for our little family. and i wasn't prepared for it so i found myself getting angry at everything. my kids were probably thinking "who's this devil woman who's taken over my mom's body". okay, i haven't been that bad. but still, i haven't been my happy cheery self either and kids are sensitive to that. 

but it's funny how the small things get you out of your funk. i always expect this grand amazing event or epiphany but it's always the little things. i was sitting by the pool for the boys morning swimming lessons and jackson was just sitting on the grass playing quietly with his toys. he was alternating between playing with his batman toys and looking up at the clouds daydreaming. he was just so sweet sitting there and having that opportunity to observe him brought that sense of pride and amazement. he's mine. i made him. what else in life could possibly bring me more happiness than those two little boys who drive me so crazy sometimes?

'91

it finally happened........

jackson asked me a question about my childhood and said "in the olden days"

since nate is home i took the opportunity to spend a little alone time with jackson. we went out for an evening snow cone and talked while we enjoyed our treat. he was impressed with the many size choices that this snow shack had to offer. since it was a special occasion i let him get a bigger size than usual.

then it happened

"mom? in the olden days when you were a kid did they have that many sizes to choose from?"

i actually thought back to the olden days in the summer of '91 when my dad put a snow shack in front of the local grocery store and me and all my siblings worked there for the summer. i told jackson that back then there was only one size and they actually were served in paper cones.

it totally blew his mind.

{finally}

first grade is over.

summer is finally here.

nate is almost home.

i can breathe again.....

sick weekend

i was sick this weekend.

but saturday was the first time the sun shined in a week so i had to take my boys to their baseball games on saturday. i needed sun. then i also met a lady at the park in the hopes that she'd buy my dog. i haven't heard back from her, so i guess she bought that darn min pin she was going to look at after looking at milo.

booo

i guess i was more tired that i thought i was. i laid down on the couch at about 6:00 to rest a little bit and fell asleep. my boys had the run of the house and the dog was left outside on the patio. i woke up at 4 a.m. freezing cold because i'd left the sliding door open. milo was shivering in his bed on the patio, and my little boys were asleep in their beds.

in the morning i asked jackson why he didn't wake me up. he said, "i don't know. you were sleeping so me and payton just watched a movie and went to bed."

i love those kids. and i can't wait until they have two parents at home to take care of them. just think how great it would've been if my husband had been home. i could've went to sleep in my bed and he could've taken care of the boys.

oh well. you do what you have to do.

speaking of my husband though, check out the stache that he was rocking before christmas.

stick a fork in me......i'm done

i literally feel like i'm married to my phone. my lover-on-the-side is the computer. that's the only contact i have with my husband. have i mentioned that i don't like to talk on the phone? so can you imagine how hard it is to despise one of the only forms of contact you have with your lover?

i am so done with this thing.

the weird thing is that the closer he gets to coming home the more depressed i get and the more i lose my mind. not because i'm nervous about him coming home. just because i want him home now!

don't worry about me though. fleetwood mac is getting me through. and on the subject of fleetwood mac...super huge shout-out to glee for introducing a whole new generation to one of my most favorite albums ever. if you don't have "rumours" go to itunes and download it now.

on a side note, if anyone is wanting a dog that resembles a large rat, let me know. i love milo. he's adorable and sweet and cute, but if i'm being honest i kinda want to punt him like a football. i'm just a little too overwhelmed at the moment to give him the love that he needs.

Food

I do my best cooking when I'm sick.

I'm just a picky eater in general, but when I'm not feeling well I'm a REALLY picky eater. When I'm sick there are only a few things that sound good to me. Chicken Noodle Soup. Roast Chicken. Stuffing. Mashed Potatoes. Potato Soup. Fresh Bread.

You know, all the good stuff that you eat when you go to Grandma's house.

But it can't be soup from a can, chicken from the store, instant mashed potatoes or Rhodes Frozen Bread. It has to be the real thing. Noodles made from scratch. Homemade stuffing shoved inside your chicken and roasted in your oven so your whole house smells. Real bread mixed in your mixer and set aside to rise for two hours.

I'm sick today, so of course that's what I spent my day doing. Roasting a chicken.

And there's a pie in the oven right now.

School

So Jackson starts school on Tuesday. In the past when I thought about my babies going to school I thought it would just be so dang heart-wrenchingly painful that I'd just sit and look at the clock and wait impatiently for the moment that I could go pick them up. But here we are, less than 48 hours away from Jackson going to ALL DAY school and I'm sitting here giddy as a school girl.

Payton will also be starting pre-school. In order to prepare him for when I go back to school full-time I'm putting him in ALL DAY pre-school 3 days a week. This will be a little harder since he and I are bff's and totally tied at the hip, but I'm so freaking excited.

While they're in school I can just be a real person. I'll go to the grocery store and hear nothing but the voices in my head and the distant bumblings of the other customers (I don't really hear voices in my head...). I'll be able to go to Target (my happy place) without emotional breakdowns about Transformers. I'll get to spend time with my girlfriends without worrying about taking a baby to the bathroom or wiping a runny nose. I'll be able to clean my house and not have a child follow right behind me and make a huge mess again. I'll get to go to the gym and not have to rush through the workout because I have a child in the nursery. I can workout for 3 hours if I want to. I won't, but I can, and that's the whole point.

Oh the possibilities!!

I need my stuff!!

We've been staying with my parents for the last couple months. It's been a great stay. I love my parents more than anything else.

With that said.......I CAN'T WAIT TO MOVE INTO OUR APARTMENT!

I miss my bed and my T.V. and cooking dinners and my computer.........and the super exciting thing for me is that after 4 years of using old ragged hand-me-down couches, I finally bought beautiful furniture for our living room. Not only is it so exciting to picture myself sitting in my sweatpants on that couch in a couple weeks, but it just feels good knowing that I saved up money and paid cash for this beautiful furniture.

So, if the next two weeks could go any faster I'd really appreciate it. Nov. 16th is the big day.

Can't wait!!!!