Really Long Easter Egg Hunt Video

This is seriously eight minutes long, and I'm putting it up for the grandparents, pretty much. Jamie's first egg hunt was fun, and you can see our scrubby selves in early-morning style :) Hope everyone had a good Easter!

Almost-free Cutting Mat

While we were visiting my parents in March, I was cutting fabric for projects I was working on, and I said to my mom, "What I really wish I had is a cutting mat and rotary blade. That would make this so much easier than--"
Here's where she said: "Well, why didn't you take mine when I offered them to you??"

I stared.
"You have a rotary blade and cutting mat?!"

She did. And she gave them to me. Thank goodness we drove so I could get them home!

I used a JoAnn coupon and got a new blade for about $5.
I also picked up a couple of white paint pens, because of this:

The mat was just blank. No measurements. That really made it a LOT harder.
Oh, and I bought one of those big, plastic rulers people use on the mats.
After a good few (tedious) hours of carefully drawing lines, I had this:

(Darn sideways picture.)

Though I haven't priced it exactly, I imagine I probably saved at least $50.

Is it perfect?
Not even close.

Is is a bit ghetto?
Definitely.

Am I happy with it while I'm on a very limited budget, and loving how much easier my fabric cutting is?

Heck yes!!

Good thing I have a sense of humor

The other night, just as I was in bed and about ready to fall asleep, Jason decided he was going to go downstairs and have a snack. I figured I'd be asleep by the time he came back, and we wouldn't get to talk or anything. So I said, "So pretty much, I'll see you in the morning?" To which he replied,

"I hope not."


...

"Oh, wait, that came out wrong..."

Last-Minute Easter Centerpiece

Plain plastic eggs: $2 for 2 pkgs, didn't use them all
Easter grass: $1
Big plastic bowl: $2.50
(all at Target)

Put the eggs in the bowl.

They were a little too boring.

Add ribbon.

What else is there to explain except "I used a hot glue gun"?

Here's a bonus: if you wait a few more days, you could get all this stuff on clearance and do this cheap project for even cheaper than I did!

I pretty much love the one with the flower.

This, btw, is one of the chairs I found for $6 last October. Jason's next project is to sand and stain them and the bench. I'm loving the green cushions I just got at Ikea--and they fit PERFECTLY! Maybe the chairs came from Ikea to begin with?

Mmmm...grapes.

Well, we got our tax return. Before tithing was paid, it was nearly four months of living expenses for our very limited budget. But we ended up spending most of it on just one thing:

Our old (if you can call lasting all of four years "old") spring mattress was pretty badly mangled and causing us both sleep problems, but especially Jason. He has a very bad back, which he's in physical therapy for right now. We took a couple days to research, shop around, and pray about spending all that money on it. Turns out it was the right thing to do, and we got a good deal. Jason has pretty much been singing its praises since we got it. He's amazed to have nights without pain! Though it was and is hard for me to have that extra money gone, I love that he's so much happier.
Jason's second semester is coming to a close. Soon we'll have one year down, two to go! He's been learning and growing so much, and gaining the respect of his teachers and classmates. The debt is scary, but we hope it will be worth it in the long run. Note: you wouldn't think typing "Arizona State University" in Google Image search would bring up so many inappropriate results.

Jamie, at almost 27 months, is talking a LOT more, though it's still not too clear. "Dat-un" is only about 5% of his vocab now, as opposed to the previous 90%. He started saying "apple joots" [juice] clear as day today. He goes pee-pee in the potty most days but has yet to do #2. Not for lack of trying, however. Especially since I started giving him a Skittle after each time he pees in the toilet, and told him he'd get 3 for going poo-poo. (There have been times where he wanted that Skittle so badly that he was sitting on that toilet jiggling himself trying to get some pee out. It was so dang funny!)

I started dumping his diaper poops in the toilet with him watching (lovely subject, this), and telling him, "See? Poo-poo goes in the potty," hoping he'd cut out the middleman. Instead, he insists on ALWAYS dumping the poop in the potty, even if we're downstairs (both of our bathrooms are upstairs), and then makes the "candy" sign afterward like he's earned it!

He's going through a phase I don't enjoy much--he has to point out EVERYTHING, and wants me to acknowledge it--correctly. As in, if he's insistently repeating total jibberish, my replying "oh yeah, uh-huh" doesn't cut it. He wants to hear how it really sounds, and he won't quit until I get it right. This is all day long, continually almost, about EVERYTHING.

Jamie still loves planes, yogurt, and his blue blanket I made for him here, which makes me so happy. Oh, and he LOOOOOOVES basketball. He had us turning over his pop-up playhouse so the round door was in ceiling position, so that he could throw balls through it. We finally got him a kids' basketball hoop last week, and he's obsessed. He takes the basketball on walks, takes it to bed with him, and now instead of demanding food first thing when you go into his room to get him in the mornings, it's "ah-bee-bee-bee!!!" (Somehow, that does translate to "basketball.")

We read Goodnight Moon every night before bed, and he loves to pick out the mouse on every page and say "squeak, squeak." He also says "hush" after it's read. He still gets so upset if Jason puts him down instead of me.

Jamie's an INCREDIBLY picky eater. I am definitely getting my comeuppance. (I used to refuse to eat dinner, consent with haughty indifference to threats of getting nothing else to eat, go out to "play" in the backyard, and fill myself up with cherries off our tree. And I once threw up green beans right next to the table--if memory serves me, it was just after my mom said, "see, they weren't so bad, were they?") Anyway, this is why he can still wear 18- or even 12-month sizes sometimes, and the 24-month pants fall off him.

He loves Sesame Street, which, for anyone who knows my family well, you know how happy that makes me. For Oscar, the Count, and Ernie, he identifies them with impressions of their laughs. For Cookie Monster, one of his favorites, it's an impression of him devouring cookies with gusto--"Nom, nom, nom, nom!" in a growly voice. Adorable.

Ehmo - Elmo (LOVES Elmo's World)
Bir - Big Bird
Abby

He knows the colors yellow, blue, and red pretty well, and is getting the hang of green and purple. From watching Sesame Street, he picked up on the letters "O" and "Y" entirely by himself and surprised me to death by pointing out an "O" on my Cordova shirt one day!

Sesame Street, thankfully, is on the Netflix Instant Queue. Recently they consolidated all the episodes, and we thought they'd taken them all off because we couldn't find them. And I seriously nearly cried. I kept thinking, how are we going to get by without Sesame Street??

A few pics:I picked out a thing at Ikea for holding toys in pull-out buckets. Jamie helped put it together by sitting on it, trying to climb on it, picking up the hammer and screwdriver and carrying them away when Dada needed them, etc.

Stinker.

Check out those feet! He loves this sleeper, which is weird because for awhile he was completely anti-sleeper, and now he throws a tantrum when we take this one off.


This was yesterday, during the misnomer Easter Egg "Hunt" at our local park. (They dumped the eggs on a field, even for the older kids, and the kids picked them up. Not at all a hunt, in my humble opinion.) It was dumb, but there was a free bouncehouse, so Jamie was happy and it was worth going for that, and of course for this picture.

He's such a good little guy, who brings unbelievable light and happiness to our lives. I know zillions of parents have already said all this, but it's so amazing to watch him grow and figure things out. He can drive me up the wall, but I'm finding that if I try to focus on teaching him for his own benefit instead of correcting him in anger because he's inconvenienced me with a mess or whatever, it's a lot easier to keep my temper, deal with things as they come, and just love him more.

Jason took a good video of Jamie playing with his basketball hoop, but it wouldn't play when I uploaded it from the camera. I'll have to have Jason look at it.

A little tip for my LDS bruthahs and sistas

For all my Mormon buddies, here's a tip I'm finding useful:

Know how tomorrow is General Conference, and it recurs every six months?

Do you have 72-hour-kits? Good job if you do, I totally understand if you don't. We all don't have to have everything perfect.

If you have put some together, when is the last time you checked them?

You know, batteries in flashlights, size of kids' clothing, expiration dates on food and other products, etc?

Don't you think every six months would be a great schedule for rotating and updating? And isn't the fact that GC occurs every six months like clockwork a convenient reminder?

I heard that somewhere and have been meaning to follow it for, oh, about four years now. (I first started our kits at a Relief Society activity almost four years ago.)

I finally did, last night, and good thing. Some items were fine, but every single piece of food was expired, and the only food Jamie's had was two jars of baby food. (I did used to keep formula in it when that was appropriate.) I opened a package of cookies from ours, thinking I'd snack on them while I worked if they weren't too bad, and just the smell was sickening.

It really would have sucked to have an emergency and then realize our "emergency food" was worthless.

So that's my tip:
every time Conference weekend rolls around, take the opportunity to rotate and update your 72-hour kits.

Here's another tip:
Go to bed early the night before Conference, so you don't oversleep and miss this great opportunity to hear our prophet and apostles speak.
(I.e., don't be like me. Ahemtwelvethirtya.m.)

(www.mormoncartoonist.com)

Good night!