Turning 2

Madeleine turned 2 today! Matt and I feel keep patting ourselves on the back for keeping her alive for these two years. It seems pretty amazing.

I woke up early this morning before she woke up to grab a few things for her birthday. It totally didn't work out according to plan and she was awake when I got home. I was trying to surprise her with breakfast in bed, but she was starving. So we gave her cheerios until the cinnamon rolls were done. I lit the candles and we sang to her...and then she burst into tears.

Matt and I just looked at each other. What was she crying about? Then she started picking up the candles and handing them to Matt.

After she took them out, she blew them out. To quote Matt,

"Ask yourself, how would you feel? You woke up on your birthday and your mother made you delicious food, BUT IT'S ON FIRE!!!"

We headed over to the Please Touch museum in Philadelphia for the first time. Matt and I were bored, but Madeleine loved it. She spent 3 hours there before we made her leave because we were starving. 

She put baby dolls through the MRI.

She went on a carousel. 

She spent hours shopping at the pretend grocery store. It was wonderful. The older kids loved playing check out and the toddlers were the crazy grocery store shoppers. Madeleine made friends with one of the check out girls and they had a little system going. It was pretty cute.

Ballpit Excavator

We finished up her day with lunch/dinner at the Cheesecake Factory. :) Madeleine got to pick out a cheesecake and then they sang to her. She was thrilled by the sprinkles, and again, took out the candle before blowing it out.

In conclusion, we love Madeleine. We love how intelligent and creative she's become. We love how compassionate and considerate she can be, including the neck hugs after she accidentally goes Hulk with her incredibly sharp fingernails. Looking forward to the next year! I'll put a regular update on her development when we go to the Dr. in a few weeks.

Decluttering

Back when I wrote this blog post, my goal for our home was to be able to clean each room in the house in fifteen minutes...even at it's messiest.

We actually have achieved that goal with every room but the kitchen. I've decided that the kitchen is a losing battle. Without a dishwasher, even the dishes from just one meal take at least twenty minutes. But since we are moving at some point, (Princeton keeps switching when) I started tackling the closets. We aren't expecting to have much closet space in our next home, so I'm trying to become less dependent on closets. 

It was pretty amazing how much stuff we were able to get rid of just going through the large closet in the living room. Almost none of it went to the trash. Some of my neighbors took the bigger items, and the rest were taken by people on freecycle. We've decided having stuff just leave our home is better than waiting for someone else to buy it, and usually on freecycle, it will be gone sometime that day. 

We still have two more closets to tackle this week, but I feel satisfied by what we have already done. When the last bit was picked up, Matt gave me a hug and thanked me for doing this. I think that's one of the best encouragements, and I'm so glad that he is on board with me about how many things we need.

For birthdays, we are gravitating away from presents and instead working on cool experiences.

This is a recap of Matt's birthday. He got one gift...and one experience. I have my fingers crossed about the experience. He still doesn't know what it is, so we get to surprise him on Thursday.

A Warhol Birthday (and our living room)

Remember a month ago when I got bored of the living room and moved all the photos to the kitchen

and left the living room looking like this?

(If not...click here)

Well...it looks better now.

The pictures had to go down for very sweet and thoughtful birthday gifts Matt gave me.

It took us a month to get them framed and up.

So tada! Here's our living room now. :)

See those beautiful posters above the couch?

They were my gift.
I was lucky enough to marry a guy who gives me art and books as gifts.

For those who don't know, you are looking at three of the famed pop artist Andy Warhol's Chanel No. 5 prints that he made in the '80s and were eventually used by Chanel in a advertising campaign.

You might be wondering why he chose these. One of my final classes at BYU was an art history class that was actually taught by a notoriously difficult professor.

For whatever reason, I actually did really well in this class 

(despite being 38 weeks pregnant by the final).

In my last paper, I wrote about how this Warhol piece was responsible for reviving the Chanel perfume image after the feminist movements of the '70s.

Matt liked my arguments so much that he said that with a bit more length, it could have been a masters dissertation. 

(For those of you who don't know,

 the biggest fights that Matt and I have ever had began while we were editing each other's papers.

So the fact that Matt was complimenting me was a miracle.)

(PS. We are fighting about this blog post right now. haha)

At one point, I looked up some of these prints and wanted to buy them.

They were a bit over our budget, so Matt talked me out of it and I lost all hope of owning them.

To my surprise, a year later three mailing tubes showed up at our door.

I was confused.

I didn't order anything.

But I was thrilled to find out that they were my birthday present!

I couldn't believe he remembered...and what it made it even sweeter was the fact he had saved a copy of my paper to make sure he got exactly the right one.

But it didn't end there.

Keeping up with the Warhol theme he also got me the soup cans that Campbell released for the 50th anniversary of Warhol's debut.

:).

It was so sweet and I was really touched.

Then I got these two pillows.

I really love them. :)

So do you like it?

And what art would you want for your birthday?

Tiny turns 1

I love birthdays.

I may have rushed Christmas a bit, because I was so excited for her birthday.

Maybe I was a bit more excited than usual

 because I was able to keep her alive for a year

or maybe because I just really love cake,

but I had been planning her birthday for months.

We started the day off with breakfast in bed. 

I made pancakes with cream cheese whipped cream and berries.

It was so delicious and it ended up tasting like cake.

(I forgot to take a picture before we stared eating it, but here's one before Madeleine put her hand in it.)

We let Madeleine have four or five bites before stripping her down and putting her on the floor.

We were expecting her to dive right in with her hands,

but she sat there trying to use the fork for a while.

Montessori win!!

Matt plopped her in the bath and we got ready to go to Philadelphia.

Right as we were going to leave the UPS guy showed up at the door with two huge boxes for Madeleine.

We figured we could open them before we left.

We opened the first box and there was a toy doll house. 

Madeleine was so thrilled she climbed on top of the box and wouldn't let us take it out.

She was even able to punch a hole through the plastic!

There aren't any photos of us in Philadelphia, because I forgot my camera card.

It was wonderful though.

We stopped by IKEA really fast for lunch and a birthday present,

before driving home and walking around Princeton's campus.

When we got home, we quickly fed Tiny before eating cake.

We had made castle cakes for her birthday.

We used left over whipped cream from our breakfast to put under the cakes

so that it looked like the castles were sitting on clouds.

Matt had been reading Madeleine this book for the last few months.

It's a wonderful story, so we decided to make cakes inspired by it.

We lit the candle again and after blowing it out, we all dug in.

Madeleine just started by eating all of the towers off the castle.

After cake it was time for presents.

Most of the presents she got on Christmas from us were from the dollar store.

I saved all my favorites for her birthday.

She started getting better at the whole unwrapping thing.

(I got her a crayon roll and a puzzle both off of etsy.)

 But my very favorite was still to come.

We stuck it on the floor.

She knew exactly what to do.
As soon as she had pulled that tissue paper out, she grabbed the bear straight out.

But see this isn't just any bear.

It was made by this local stay at home mom.

She makes bears and quilts from baby clothes.

Madeleine and I went over and dropped off Madeleine's newborn clothes a week or so ago.

We got to pick it up on Monday.

It's so beautiful, and I loved seeing Madeleine's newborn clothes being used.
They are full of so many memories that happened a year ago.

I might do a whole blog post on it by itself.
I love it that much, and thankfully Madeleine does too.

She has been carrying it around nonstop.

Matt then finished reading Castle in the Air and put her to bed, before putting together her last gift.

We actually woke Madeleine up when he was done putting it together.

We were pretty excited. :)

Happy Birthday Madeleine.

We love you!

Matt's Birthday! (Yesterday)

Matt's birthday was yesterday! Even though he wouldn't have minded if we didn't do anything for his birthday, I would, so I tried to go all out for his birthday. I even had bought Baby a new dress for the occasion!

It was such a disaster. It was kind of like a pinterest fail. I had one beautiful image in my brain how the day should go, but the real result was laughable.

First, since Tiny Offspring is teething, neither of us has slept much this week. I tried really hard not to wake Matt up when I got up to comfort her. I figured that he deserved a decent night sleep and even could sleep in! Around 5am, Baby finally went to sleep, and I curled up to sleep next to Matt. Mission accomplished.

No. Next thing I know...

"Knock, knock, knock."

It took a minute for my brain to register that someone was at the door, and when my brain had computed it, I was horrified! No one really knows we live here, and it was only 8!!! Who could be knocking on the door?

I poked Matt awake, because clearly whoever was up this early had evil intentions, and there was no way that I was going to answer it.

He went up stairs and came back. It was the postman, dropping off our BYU diplomas since they didn't fit in the mailbox and it was raining.

(So maybe not quite as evil as I imagined)

We couldn't go back to sleep after all that adrenaline had been pumped through our bodies (and the fact our teething monster was awake and looking all cute too.)

Therefore, we got up. My plan of letting Matt sleep in didn't happen, but to make up for it I let him open his presents. Only I hadn't wrapped them yet, so he just pulled them out of a paper bag.

(more like what I had imagined)

By now it was 8:15...I hadn't planned to be up this early or the rain...so we did nothing.

After sitting there semi-awkwardly, Matt was kind of bored so he called his family, but no one picked up.

And then we still weren't really sure what to do...

So then he taught me organic chemistry, because we aren't super creative and I had been wanting to learn a bit more about it for a while.

But really...that's not the most exciting thing to do for your birthday.

Birthday Man with baby in new dress 

(Somewhere in the mix, I found out my camera charger broke...so less photos than I had wanted.)

The day ticked by, and finally it was late enough for dinner. Redemption!!

I had bought Matt some real pepperoni (the kind you can slice) for one of his presents, and there was just no way we could mess up pizza. Thank goodness this part worked, because the "cake" was just sad.

Matt had pick out brownie mix box and chocolate ice cream, how could I mess this up??

Well, right when the brownies were about done, our Tiny woke up, so Matt volunteered to run downstairs and calm her down. I took the brownies out and put the candles in, before waiting for Matt...thinking nothing of the wax candles melting in the very hot fresh brownies. I was too excited to have hot brownies and ice cream.

After 5 minutes, I noticed the candles were getting droopy. Thinking that was slightly weird, I picked out up, only to find that any part of the candle that had been in the cake had lost all of its wax.

Droopy candles

Panicked, I ran downstairs and pulled Matt upstairs. He helped me search the kitchen for something to light them with, before I sang him a rushed happy birthday, so he could blow out the candles while there was still something left of them!!

The small remains of the candles

After he blew them out, he went back downstairs to comfort our now crying baby, while I tried to pick out the wax on his cake.

As you can tell it went completely according to plan. ;)

Anyway, I'm so glad that I'm married to someone that can laugh about days like this with me and doesn't mind teaching organic chemistry to his wife on his birthday. I'm so happy that he was crazy enough to marry me.

Happy Birthday (yesterday) Sweetheart! 

I love you!

Apparently Awful Pictures

 Matt and I went up to my parent's house for Riley's birthday. The first thing Matt and I did when we got there was to check out the new members of our family. My parents got baby chicks, and they are so much fun to hold. They sound like little squeaky toys. My parents' dog Jasper just loves them. He kept trying to lick them when we were holding them.

(This picture is definitively not a very flattering picture, BUT it is worth putting on here. Why you might ask? It because it is the only picture of Matt and me together in a picture since we came home from our honeymoon.)

We went up to Salt Lake to see the Hilton Family Concert, which was amazing, before coming home to cake and presents. A few highlights of the night...

Jasper

Matt took advantage of my parents' supply of ramen. I do not like having it in our  kitchen...

Riley the birthday boy!! 

Yum

I did two 5K runs this week!! Go me! I was so excited, that I could do that without dying. When I was a senior in high school, I barely finished one under an hour. This time 36 min.

My motivation.

Blooming Onion

(Matt says as I put this up: Can't we just have it every week until we die? They are so freaking good.)

I totally wanted one for my birthday dinner, so Matt and I walked up to Outback to get it. It was completely worth sweating for an hour to eat this. 

Highlights of my birthday:

1. Blooming Onion

2. Matt cooking me breakfast in bed

3. Cake with my family and friends

4. Having a Clean House

5. Getting a sewing machine a month before my birthday

Hi Anna!

Happy Birthday Anna!!!

Today was such a lazy day. After having our friends the Herrick’s over last night, we apparently were exhausted. We woke up at 11 to the Matt’s phone beeping. He rolled over and called Anna, while I was trying to figure out what I was going to do today. Somewhere in my muddled mind, I thought about how turning 18 was exciting and how I wish we could be in Virginia celebrating it with her.

So today, we ended up throwing a party in Anna’s honor here in Utah! There was even cake and balloons and party guests.

Pre-Party Dinner -- Gyros!! (They were really good)

We just finished dinner up when our awesome friends came over. First Ryan and his cute lady friend Ariel came over, and not long after Erin and Logan came over!! (Erin had just come from buying her wedding dress!!!!!!!)

The Cake

Singing Happy Birthday to her

Matt!!!

Ariel and I blew out the candles for her, while Anna thought of a wish! We hope you had a great birthday Anna!! We love you, and maybe next year if you aren't globe trotting you can be here with us next year to celebrate your birthday. 

Things You Can Do Once You Are 18

• Vote
• Jury Duty
• Sign your own medical and permission slips
• Get your own credit cards
• Model for playboy
• Work a fork lift
• Get a tattoo
• Get married
• Do not need a cosigner on a contract
• Play on game shows
• Sit at the "Grown up table"