Another Adventure at JoAnn's

I don't know why, but I always have a story to tell when I go to JoAnn's Fabrics. I think it's just because I go there a lot and I live on Los Angeles. Braden said I should take a video camera next time I go.

So here goes....
I was making my way to stand in line at the cash register when a woman with a 4-year-old little girl, facing backward in her cart, asked me if I was in line. I looked up to see that the person talking to me was.....




Justine Bateman! I love L.A.! I know it's no Johnny Depp sighting or anything, but when I was 14 watching t.v. in my living room, I never in a million years thought that Mallory Keaton would be at a fabric store in front of me in line. It was so cute too because Jonah loves older kids. He was facing Justine's daughter and making the cutest noises and faces and trying to get her to laugh at him. He was getting so crazy that Justine looked at me and asked what her daughter was doing--thinking she was provoking Jonah. I just told her that Jonah just loves kids and was trying to make her laugh. As we were buying our things Mallory and Jonah's new girlfriend left as Justine said "bye bye" to Jonah.

Thanksgiving and grandparents

This is a little behind but I wanted to post these really cute photos. Jonah never smiles for the camera, but when we wanted to take a picture of him with Grandma and Grandpa he was being rediculously silly. My parents came for Thanksgiving, and it was so much fun even though it was small. We had delicious food including a turkey that Braden made and croissants that I made from scratch. I'm still thinking about them! Yummy! My dad was so kind to help Braden extend the sprinkler system for a grassy play area for Jonah in the yard.

I was taking a shower the other day, and when I was done I came out and say this. Jonah had taken my robe from my bedroom and brought it into the den, so he could cuddle with it on the couch while watching Yo Gabba! Gabba! It was so cute!

New Flavor

Well my ice cream is gone. It only lasted a week--even with all the Thanksgiving food we had to eat too. It doesn't help that Braden also loved it, so that meant I had to share. Anyone have an idea on the next flavor I should try? It should probably have chocolate in it. I was thinking mint ice cream with chocolate swirl. Any ideas?

Enjoying the Moment

I'm sitting here having a great moment.
I've been having the cliche ice cream cravings because of this


My very favorite kind has always been Ben and Jerry's New York Super Fudge Chunk




I just can't get enough of it. Instead of buying a little pint of it for $3 or $1.99 if it's on sale and having it disappear in just one sitting, I decided to use my Ben and Jerrys ice cream recipe book and make it myself.


Can I just say yummy!!!!! I made about 3 quarts, so it should last me a little while anyway. I'm just sitting here while Jonah is napping and eating my delicious creation. Life's pretty good!

fun with friends

I thought these would be fun to post. This first video is when Kevin and Adam Low were over at our house. Jonah showed them something he learned a few weeks ago. It caught on with the other two boys and they were all doing it.

This is Jonah with his friend Josie. I don't know why kids like to congregate in the bathroom. Good thing it's clean!

Post Election Conversations

I was at JoAnn's today buying fabric. While I was standing in line to pay for it, the checker started a conversation that got everyone around me involved. She mentioned how Prop 8 passed and now same sex couples can't get married. Then someone else said, "Well I think people didn't really understand to vote 'no'to allow same sex marriage. Otherwise I don't see how it could have possibly passed." Then I heard an employee say, "You know the Mormon church was in charge of the campaign." The other lady responded by saying, "I don't know why they care, they can marry as many wives as they want anyway. They're just hateful and so hypocritical."

These were their actual words while I just sat there listening. I'm not one that likes confrontation, so I didn't say anything. I also thought that engaging in a debate or argument would be just giving them fuel for the fire and proving their point. What I wanted to say though was, "How can you make such judgements on people that you don't even know anything about?" I know that any debate has two sides, and I've always thought that if you really try to understand the opposite side usually any negative feelings toward that person dissolve. I've put that in action. It's really easy to make judgements when you are distanced from someone.

I just wanted to share that because it really disturbed me. I was someone that they were talking about "a mormon" standing right there as they were talking about me. They didn't know me, and I wonder if they had known if they would still be saying those things.

In case anyone was wondering polygymy is illegal. I wonder what those same people at JoAnn's would think if there was a proposition making polygymy legal in California. Would they be as open minded about it?

Poop cake

Ok. I know that blog posts about Halloween are getting old, but I had to post a picture of the poop cake I made. I actually didn't take the picture, and I was upset that I didn't have one. Then I read my friend Claire's blog and she had taken one. By the way it tasted really good. Not many people dared eat it.

Wonder Twin Powers.......

This Halloween was really our first one with Jonah kind of realizing what was happening. Ok-he didn't really. He just was excited to put things into his "trick or treat" bucket. He doesn't really know what candy is because I don't give it to him. As he was playing with his bucket full of candy this morning by putting the candy out and in over and over again, I walked into the room and noticed drool with a little chocolate dripping down his chin. He had taken a tiny bite out of the full sized hershey bar--wrapper and all. That's when I took the bucket away.







We had our church "trunk or treat" last week. That's when we debuted our Wonder Twins costumes that I made. I thought we looked pretty cute as Jana, Zan and Gleek. I especially loved Jonah's little monkey hood and super cape. We didn't win the costume contest, and I was a little bitter about it. I think super heroes are overlooked at Halloween. That's my consolation. Plus my friend Sarah and her family won, and they were pretty cute. She made their costumes too.
I'm hoping that Kip and Jean's family would want to wear our costumes in the future and their whole family can go as the super friends--there yours if you want them Jean. I just can't bare the thought of my hard work and cute costumes just sitting in our garage forever with nobody to admire them.

On the actual Halloween we went to a great party at our friends the Cookes. They live in a coveted trick or treating neighborhood because there are many famous people that live around there. We had a fantastic potluck dinner then all the kids went trick or treating around the neighborhood. Braden, Jonah and I left to go trick or treating in our neighborhood though because we wanted to show off how cute Jonah was to our neighbors and also because Braden totally decked out the house with hollograms and everything.







It was a lot of fun! I love Halloween!

Finally Braden's turn

I'm finally getting around to post this after my friend Beth tagged me. It was fun to write about Braden for a change. I also love sharing photos of us and our wedding. Here's how it works if you've been tagged: Each person answers the questions below and at the end of the post you tag 4 people. Then go to their blog and comment to them that they have been tagged.


How long have you been married? 2 and a half years
How long did you date? 3 months before we were engaged and 6 before we were married. By the time you reach our age you want to hurry things along. We knew each other for 2 years though.
Who eats sweets? Braden will eat anything that is around, but I am the one that craves desserts more.
Who said "I Love You" first? He did.
Who is taller? He is - he's the perfect height for someone my size I think.
Who can sing best? I think he would say him because he sings like he's a rock star, but sometimes he really can't hear the note. This is especially bad at church when he's slightly off and singing very loudly and confidently in my ear while I'm trying to hear the alto part. He would have a great voice though if he had training. So I think I'm the better singer.
Who is smarter? We both are in different ways.
Who does the laundry? He does his own and I do mine and Jonah's
Who pays the bills? I do.
Who sleeps on the right side of the bed? If you're in bed, I do.
Who mows the lawn? We live in California, so it's the gardner Rogelio.
Who cooks dinner? I do mostly. He's a good cook though, but it's still up for debate who is better
Who drives? Braden
Who is the first to admit they are wrong? He is. He's more humble and it's usually because I was right.
Who kissed who first? He kissed me first.
Who asked who out first? I think he asked me out before we were dating, but after that you don't really ask each other on dates anymore. It's just assumed we'll hang out. We started dating before we really went on any dates.
Who wears the pants? I like to think we both do, but really Braden does. He agrees.

When we were dating we went to the Cami Awards and met Jon Voigt. It was one of my favorite memories with Braden.


This is the picture we used for our wedding announcement. I loved it. Our good friend Erik took it.


This is after we got married in the Bountiful Temple. It was really hard to find a good picture of both of us.


I'm going to tag Kathy, Kate, Michelle, and Amber.

Which one?

After some discussions with friends and many people telling me that Jonah looks exactly like Braden, I thought it would be fun to post some pictures of us as kids around Jonah's age. Let me know what you think.

I know we have plenty of pictures of Jonah already posted for you to look and compare, but here's another one.


This is me at my 1st birthday I think--notice the chubby cheeks


I'm not sure the age on this but I think I was about Jonah's age now 15 or 16 months (Mom can you verify?)


A lot of people don't believe I was a chubby little girl. I just threw this in as proof. This was the beginning of my awkward stage. I think I was the chubbiest at this age.


This is just one of my favorite pictures. I remember when I got it taken. Don't you love 70's backdrops and furry carpet?


This is Braden at 11 months old


This is Braden at about 15 months


This is just the cutest kid picture of Braden. Wasn't he the cutest kid? People thought he looked like Elliot from ET when he got older.


There you go. Who does he look most like? Maybe neither one of us. People also say he looks like Billy.

Little People Big Fun!

It was great to get out of this constant sunny weather for a while and enjoy the rain and beauty it brings. Braden had to go to Seattle for business, so I decided Jonah and I would tag along. We would only need to buy one plane ticket among all the other reasons why we just had to go. My good friend Kathy and her family just moved to Seattle, and our other good friends Erik and Jennille just moved to Portland. Not to mention that the Roloff Farms is there where they film "Little People Big World." Erik and Braden are slightly obsessed with the show--I think Erik is a little more than Braden. To Braden it's just normal life.
Braden, Me, Jonah, Jennille, and Erik posing with Amy Roloff


Us with Matt Roloff's parents.




This is over looking Seattle.
I liked the way I look in this picture--probably because I'm blurry. Jonah isn't even facing the camera. He's not that enthusiastic about pictures.


This is Jonah with his little buddy Caleb. We stayed with Kathy. This was the only picture we took. I don't know why. It was fun watching Jonah play with Liam (who is about a year and a half older) and Caleb (who is about 3 months younger).




We also got to visit a place called Voodoo Doughnuts because they had an autographed picture of Braden's dad Billy Barty on the wall. They also had great doughnuts. It was a bit reminiscent of the Soup Nazi.



Family shot in front of the Portland temple

Jonah Update

Jonah is a little slow in learning how to talk. The only word he consistently says is his word for food which is "Na" meaning snack. Oh and everytime he picks up a book he makes a cow noise--does that count as a word? Every other word he says it's only when he's copying us and we tell him to say something like "poo poo." You know the important words. Well he recently discovered how to use his tongue while talking. This video shows how he has a lot of important things to tell us. Too bad we can't understand what he is saying. By the way I was very lucky to get this on video. Everytime he is being cute and happy he completely freezes the minute I get the camera out.

Yosemite!

This camping trip was much better than the first one! First of all Yosemite is beautiful and there are so many things to do there other than hiking (I'm not a hiker at all-especially in really hot weather and with a 1 year old). This is me and Jonah starting our hike. We're actually happy still. Braden wanted to stay one night longer to really make the 5 hour drive worth it, so I told him I would if we stayed in a hotel the 3rd night. We stayed at this place called the Narrow Guage inn. They had a train that went through the forest. We were hoping to see a bear because everyone talked about how we were in bear country and everything, but we decided it was about as hard as seeing bigfoot. We even asked one of the shop workers how we could see a bear and he replied, "This isn't a zoo." I think he was tired of all the tourists talking to him like they knew him or something and he was glad his summer job was almost over.


Jonah giving daddy love


This video is when we were on the bus and Jonah was really squirmy, restless, and grumpy. The bus driver started making cat noises and Jonah was talking back to her. He just thought there was a voice coming from heaven and it really calmed him down.

I'm finally home

It seems like forever since I've slept in my own bed. Jonah and I were in Utah visiting my parents for 9 days, then we came home and headed for Yosemite for 4 days. Here are some highlights of our trip.



We got to spend some time with my good friend, Cathy, from college. I've known her longer than any of my other friends. We used to be roommates and do everything together like we were connected at the hip. People actually told us that. We would walk to the grocery store that we used to work at, and buy a pint of Ben and Jerry's ice cream, and eat half of it then get in a food fight with the other half. We would plan our outfits for work and wear the same color of jeans. I'm not just talking dark blue or light blue jeans... we had navy, forest green, burgandy, etc. We were so trendy. It was so great to spend time with her and her cute family. Her little boy is only 6 months older than Jonah and she just had a little girl that I held most of the time I was visiting. She just sleeps--it's so cute.






This is us at the zoo with my dad. My mom isn't in any pictures, but she had a broken foot and still wanted to come to the zoo with us. I don't know if Jonah really cared.


This is Jonah stealing all of Danny's food. He eats like he's never seen food before.


Jonah's favorite toy was the empty book shelf at my parent's house. That kept him occupied for a while.

We got to see a couple of good friends and family while were in Utah. This is my good friend Kelly. We love her.




When we got back there was another 15 month old boy on the plane with his mom. Braden picked us up, and as we were in the elevator we saw the boy and mother with her husband as well. We commented on how they were exactly the same as us right down to the black suitcase with the pink ribbon on it. Then we found out that the mom is from Salt Lake too and her and her husband and 15 month old live in Studio City. It was like meeting the blond version of our family. Kind of creepy!

Stay tuned for the Yosemite highlights.....