Olive can't get enough books

As I was cleaning up the kitchen this morning Olive wandered into her room. After a few minutes it became very quite. Any mother knows that silence means trouble. So I went to see what she had gotten into and this was how I found her:

Olive is like me. She loves books. She always has. It has been my go-to, no-fail, distraction or entertainment from day one. I would always carry books in my purse in case she started to melt down at a store. My favorite place to shop is any bookstore and Olive is the same. She could spend hours at the library (and we usually do). The library is heaven because she can have a whole tub of new books that she can look through to her hearts content. It makes me so happy that she is a book worm. I am so looking forward to the day that I can read my favorite stories from my childhood with her.

Now that she is talking more, her story time is very entertaining. She must point out every single object on the page. She also likes to tells the stories to herself and jabbers on and on. It really cracks me up wondering what her stories could be about.

The only down side to her book obsession is that it is nearly impossible to keep these books put away because she likes them constantly accessible. That means that I am walking around picking up books scattered around the house all day long. A small sacrifice I guess.

Baby Beanie and Booties (that's a lot of B's!)

I seem to know quite a few pregnant ladies right now. It always happens like that doesn't it? Women get pregnant in waves. Since I have quite a few baby showers I will now be attending, I have been trying out different baby hat and bootie patterns because I think it is fun to give homemade gifts. Here is my latest completed set.

I added a little flower to the toes on these Mary Jane booties because you can't have enough flowers.

I like the hat but decided that next time I will do contrasting colors for the flowers so that they will pop more.

I made another hat/bootie set out of this varriegated yarn and I really loved it. So I decided to make Olive a matching hat also. I made the flower extra big, but I might have gone overboard.

A knit hat is really what Olive, and new babies in our ward, need for summer isn't it? It's definitely not practical, but still cute (at least I think so). And no, this does not make me wish for cool weather. It has taken forever to get warm and I don't want to think about winter.

I have fallen in love with my yard....again

I have already said this but when we were looking at this house we came into the back yard and fell in love. We stayed back there for like an hour, even while other people came to walk through. It was kinda awkward but we already felt ownership of this yard.
Now that it is spring/ summer we have fallen in love again but with all new things.

I have loved loved loved having a yard for the first time ever. The reasons that I love it are many. One thing that I didn't expect was how everything was going to be a big surprise. We thought what we saw last year was going to be it, and we were happy with that. Happily, we keep getting things blooming and every day feels like a new discovery. I am loving it!

When we looked at our house it was early fall and our yard looked very different. The spring was very exciting to see the big blooms and the awesome colors.

These tulips were a welcome surprise.

When we first saw our yard my immediate reaction was that this ivy was going to be GONE in the spring. But as it got warmer it started blooming and Scott convinced me that we should keep it.

I'm glad we did because the flowers make a big difference from just boring, annoying, grow-everywhere ivy. Don't get me wrong, I actually love ivy that grows on houses and fences. But just in the yard it has a tendency to take over. And maybe you can tell that it isn't the pretty leafed climbing ivy. Anyway, the point is, I'm actually glad we kept it because it looks nice when it is not out of control.

I thought this bush was a big weed bush or something because of its rather odd placement. But then it bloomed these huge, fragrant flowers.

They started like this and I fell in love.

Now they look like this. Being a complete garden novice I have no idea what kind of flower they are, I just know that I am happy to have them.

I also thought this tree was rather annoying. Everything was just SO overgrown and out of control. We trimmed it back and now it has bloomed and it isn't so annoying any more.

I love how the blooms are in little clusters. So pretty right?

I was kinda late in catching these blooms so they look a bit shabby now, but they smell great.

I think that the combination of the blooms and aroma go together perfectly.

This was another surprise. I know what your thinking, this is just a shrub right? Well for months and months this was just a plain old green shrub in a crappy location. Then in the spring it became this beautiful varriegated leaf bush.

I thought that it was dying because it turned all yellow. I swear I didn't enhance the color on that photo. It is so bright and cheery.

Probably the best surprise is our little friend Robin. He always visits when I am gardening and comes surprisingly close. Olive loves him too.

Olive Loves Wearing 2 (YAY!!!) Shoes

We went from this:

To this today:

And we couldn't be happier!

Memory Book

As promised, my gift to Scott for our 5th anniversary was this memory book that I made for him. I was worried that it might be kinda chessy or lame. It certainly doesn't hold a candle to a song but I didn't see that coming. I kinda thought I was making a killer gift and totally got shcooled. But, when all was said and done, I am actually really glad that I did it.

I started out with a little letter to him about how great and amazing these years have been.

Next was a reminder of where we started and where we are at 5 years.

Then I went year by year with a few pictures that kinda captured the most memorable parts of each year. I included a little written explanation of each year and some of the great(est) memories. I had a title for each year and I thought you might be interested in the highlights. An overview of our years together are as follows:
2005 A New Life
2006 The Year of George
2007 The Year of Challenger
2008 The Year of Olive
2009 The New House
2010 Still In Progress
Some of those are inside jokes and some are very obvious. It was fun to read through it with Scott and talk about some of the great memories from the years.

I ended with a little note about what I look forward to and how excited I am for what our future holds. My intention is to update this little book on our 10, 15, etc anniversaries and highlight the past 5 years. I think it will be really fun to read over and hopefully give a cool perspective to our kids about what was happening in those years. I had so much fun making this book. I hope you liked it too.

I love....

my husband!

I feel like I need to do some catch up on my blog and get back on schedule so this is kinda old news. In May Scott and I celebrated our 5 year wedding anniversary. It is crazy how fast the time has gone and how much our lives have changed. I don't want to be a cliche "Oh I am going to brag forever about how my husband is better than yours" blog. But it felt big to us, so I thought I would quickly share.

Since we were in California we decided it would be fun to go to Disneyland just by ourselves, and it was. Thanks to my awesome mom who made the whole trip possible and was willing to watch Olive so we could celebrate.

It was nice just being able to hold hands instead of holding a toddler while we waited in line. It is crazy how much less stressful and low key Disneyland seems without kids. We were able to go on almost all the rides because you can get anywhere fast without a stroller!


We went to dinner at a nice restaurant in Downtown Disney because we didn't want gross Disneyland food. It was very nice to have a quite dinner. We exchanged gifts and let's just say Scott's made me cry. He wrote me a song! Can you believe that? I have "wanted" a song written about me forever and it is the cutest sweetest song. He played all the instruments and recorded it so I could listen to it there. Our real gift is a cruise, but we got the best price in September so I guess we will be celebrating again!

After dinner we went back and rode a few more rides. We got ice cream and watched the fabulous firework show. It really was a great way to spend our 5th anniversary.

This is what I gave Scott. More to come on what is inside on Friday.

(Pretty good cliff hanger huh? I think I am going to follow TV's example and always end with either a plot twist or a shocking ending. Does that give you enough suspense to came back?)

Olive Loved Disneyland

Olive (and all of us) really had a great time at Disneyland. There is just something so fun about that place. I think so much of the fun for a parent is the anticipation and excitement of the kids. I can't wait for that. Even though Olive doesn't really remember, I know that she had the time of her life being there with family and spending time together.

Olive absolutely adored her Minnie ears. She went into the store and it was impossible to get her to leave because she wanted to try every single hat on. She wore them almost the entire trip and would ask for her "hat". Just recently she has figured out who Mickey and Minnie are and would say their names whenever she saw them. That ended up being about a million times a day since there are stuffed animals and figures and almost anything you can imagine in the shape of Mickey and Minnie at Disneyland. It really was pretty cute though.

This is how most of our family pictures were. We did go with lots of family but it seemed like when we wanted a shot no one was around. This is us waiting to get on the train, which at the end of the day, turned out to be a big mistake because it was so slow and Olive was melting down the entire time (until we got to the dinosaurs). Between alternating having one parent in the pic with Olive (because we also have a ton of those shots from this trip), I kinda like these type of self portraits.

Olive liked the concept of most of the rides and went on quite a few including Pirates and Haunted Mansion. We were pretty impressed.

Her stand out favorite was Small World. She Loved that ride. This is them while on the ride which is why it is so blurry. The first time she went on it she was silent, in awe. The subsequent times she jabbered nonstop pointing and bouncing in out laps out of excitement. It was awesome. She just couldn't get enough.

She loved chillin' in the O.

She loved the teacups and would scream every time we went past them. We started going the long way so she wouldn't see the ride.

Olive really loved Toon Town. We spent hours there while she ran around which was a relief after wrestling her in line.

She loved getting some freedom from being in the stroller all day!

Olive went nuts over all of the animals on the jungle cruise. We were very excited to take her on it because we knew it would be a hit.

Olive LOVED the parade. She loved everything about it, especially the part where she got to go out and dance in the street. I couldn't stop laughing.

She loved riding on daddy's shoulders and it's a good thing because that was the perfect way to keep her contained.
But more than anything she loved (as did everyone else) spending so much time with her cousins. We are so lucky to have so much family that are so close. Olive really loved her cousins and they adore her. It really warms my heart.

Here she is riding some rides with her cousin and just having a good time hanging out with them.



Olive did not love everything. Here are some things she did not love:
On almost every ride we went on Olive would be very very excited and we would get all strapped in and then the ride would start and these are the pictures we would get. Oh the horror on her face. every picture looks like we are torturing her and forcing her on these rides. When the ride was over we would ask her if she liked it and she would say yes and ask to go again. You would never tell from the pics.

Olive loved the carousels and would ask for the "ho-sies" and would then try to climb off. She like just sitting up high on the pretty horse, no need to go around in circles!


A kind of surprising melt down was when the pretend cars from Cars at the little photo opp. spot were not real cars. She was so frustrated and didn't understand why they were broken. She kept saying "Stuck Stuck!" as she pulled on the doors. I had to drag her away kicking and screaming. Who knew?

Of course she did not love the characters up close. She was fine with them at a distance but as you will she, there was no way we were going to get a good picture with them.




Welp, there you have it, if you made it through the plethora of pictures. We had such a wonderful time and are so thankful to have such a great extened family to go on great trips with!