Thanksgiving Feast and Christmas Wishes

Not our thanksgiving feast, Ainsley's! I decided Thanksgiving was the perfect day for her to try her first real solid food. :) In honor of the day, we started with Sweet Potatoes, for all you yam fans out there. At first she seemed a bit wary, but once she got a taste of them she was gung ho! Another step towards growing up. My little girl.




I don't know if anyone's checked out my link to Beansprout Designs, but MAN, i want one of these bags! Tom, if you are paying attention, this is the one i want :) This lady makes these amazing bags, they are super high quality fabrics, hand made, i love it. She also makes most of the really cute baby head bows you see on Ainsley. I wish I had that kind of talent, I am totally envious of people with such crafty natures and the skills to back it up. Anyway, i thought i'd share, I know every girl likes a cute bag. There's a bunch more at the site, feel free to check it out. :)

BEANSPROUT DESIGNS

Husband of the Year Award!

and the prize goes to.... Tom Christensen! for taking his wife's week long absence to clean the entire house and surprise her when she got home!!

He could have watched sports and ordered pizza, he could have slept in and done nothing.. but no! He LOVES me! He loves me and wanted to do something to make me happy! :D
He called up Kirty and asked her to give him some guidance on how to start. My clean, organized, selfless friend brought her two little kids over to my overly messy house and helped my husband get started at putting it back together. I really want to thank her as well for her amazing willingness to help us out, but she definitely wanted to make known that Tom did most of it, sometimes I guess you just need a little push to get started, i know i do.
So thank you, thank you, thank you to my wonderful husband, who worked 40+ hrs last week and still managed to give me the best surprise I've had in years. My house feels so warm and welcoming. I feel like I have a fresh start and am excited to get on with Holiday plans without that dark cloud hanging over me.

My Tom is such a sweet thoughtful guy, I know I don't acknowledge often enough how much he does for me and Ainsley. He works so hard, but still has time to brighten our days with his warm silly nature. He makes my life interesting, and makes me feel safe wherever we are. Thanks honey, I love you!

Over the River and thru the Woods....

to grandmother's house we go!

This week we went to see the country side of the family, lol. My mom, Kelly, Matt, JaNae and Gavin all live in the same small town. :) It had been a while since my mom and Ainsley had seen each other, and I couldn't wait until Christmas to get them together, so I picked a week and decided to sneak down. The weekends have become harder and harder to get away, when we leave on a weekend it feels like we don't get any days off really, and since we've been teaching our primary class we feel guilty each time we aren't there. So, since Tom works a lot during the week, and didn't really need to go anyway, Ainsley and I took off by ourselves.

It was really fun to see the cousins interact with each other. Gavin's a step ahead of Ainsley, crawling all over and starting to pull himself up and trying to stand by himself. Ainsley was fascinated by him! :) She was staring and smiling at him all weekend. I'm not sure what he thought of her, at time it seemed he was a bit jealous of this new person in his territory, but I think he really did want to play with her, and just didn't realize how much more powerful than her he was, lol. (check out the video)

It was great to see everyone and spend some time down south. I miss those guys so much, and I know Ainsley and Grandma Cinda miss each other more than either can say. Love ya guys! See you at Christmas! LOVE!

Best Buds

Three Unhappy Babies (hehe)

Hangin' with Grandpa Kelly

Ok, I will succumb to the Tagging.

This one is a list of 6 little known facts about me.. hmm..

1. I brush my teeth in the shower. Tom thinks this is ridiculous and yucky. I like it cuz I can be as messy as i want to be, lol.

2. I've been engaged twice. The time before Tom was at 18 and stupid. SO glad I didn't go thru with that. But it is how i met my wonderful Thomas, so i can't wish it never happened.

3. I hate watermelon.. it's the texture, it's like water logged foam. ick.

4. I'm not an outdoorsy person at all, but I once went snowboarding and took rock climbing classes to impress a boy.. (spent the snowboarding on my butt, and twisted my ankle rock climbing.. guess i'm not outdoorsy for a reason!)

5. I told all my friends for years that I was allergic to coconut.. it was just easier to get out of eating it, i didn't have to make anyone feel bad or eat something i didn't like. I did eventually tell most of them.. now i say I'm allergic to coconut unless it's on shrimp.. yummm.. hehe

6. i participated in a peace rally before the war started. I like to imagine myself as a flower child hippy at heart. I wish I was more politically active now, I miss my Poli Sci major roommate, midnight discussions and keeping me up to date on what's going on.

Gingerbread House Festival

Well we had a fun outing the other day. :) Kirty and her kids and Ainsley and I went to Thanksgiving Point last week to see the Gingerbread House Festival. It was really cute, I couldn't believe how intricate some of them were. There were a couple of castles, a few trains, a couple of cute ones kids made. After looking at all of them there was an area set up to decorate cookies, it was fun to get out and even though I know she doesn't really know what's going on, and isn't really old enough to appreciate what we're doing, it's nice to show her anyway. :) I get so sad thinking of how fast she's growing up, but I try and remember all the fun things we'll get to do together as she gets older. :)

Helpin' Myself

So, confession.. i love self-help books :) Maybe it's the psych major in me, or the insecurities that make me constantly want to change or something else entirely.. but I love reading books on how and why people do things and what we can do to change what we do. I read a lot, including the Mars and Venus books, Love Languages, the 7 Stages of Motherhood, Leadership and the Art of Self-Deception, etc.

However, I have a few that I go back to time and time again. When I'm unhappy with my body I read 'French Women Don't Get Fat', i love that she hates to exercise too, and that it's not about denying yourself instead it's about not wasting your calories on things you don't really care about, and eating well. I also love how she talks about buying fresh food at local markets and walking through Paris to burn calories. :)

When I'm feeling overwhelmed I like I 'The Procrastinator's Handbook'. It's a great kick in the butt for me. It has tons of great advice, and tips I use to keep from disappearing under piles of paper and odds and ends and long to do lists. :) *Handle each paper only once *make to do lists in spiral notebooks so you don't lose them, and date the top of each page and keep them so you can look back thru and to see when you did things, and appreciate all you've done. *set a kitchen timer and clean for a certain amount of time a day. Each time I read it I find something that I can do that I had forgotten or not paid attention to before that can make my life easier.

And when I find myself always angry at Tom and getting upset and resentful, I read 'The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands'. It's really great at helping me see reason and understand my wonderful husband better. Sometimes I can get all caught up in what i think should be, I can't see what really is. And it really shows the best way to get what you want! I was completely surprised the first time I tried what she suggests and saw how quickly Tom became so loving and helpful, and how happy I had become. One of the things that always sticks with me from this book is that 'the worst thing a wife can do to her husband is to never be happy.' That men really do just want to be your knight in shining armor. I think about that a lot when I find myself complaining all the time. Dr. Laura is sometimes a bit too much for me, and I do not advise more submissive minded women to read this book, but for my fellow strong women, i think this book gives a much needed insight to our husbands, (or even future husbands for my fabulous single ladies out there) And if you want to be happy, and get what you need from your man, I totally recommend it. I have it on AudioBook if anyone wants to borrow it. :)

I reread these books, or at least parts of them, over and over, whenever I feel the need for a little inspiration or just need a little help. So there's my confession, and I don't care if you think i'm a little silly. It works for me, and i love it. :)

Look What I Did!

Okay, now i know most of you crafty talented women out there will think this is pretty lame, but I am a bit challenged in this area and tend to not even try. So I'm pretty proud of myself, so just keep it to yourself if you see this as the tiny thing it is. ;)

I found this old gray shadow box frame and painted it to match the green in her room. I ended up buying a couple greens and a white that I mixed to get a color i was happy with. I was going to keep the glass and put a cute scrapbook paper background, but in the end I liked it better as more of a shelf. The plaster hand and foot I made with my mom a couple weekends ago, and I bought some glazing stuff and put on at least 8 coats, so now it's all protected and shiny. :)

I also painted this cute framed 'A' my cousin Janell made for me. The frame used to be a pretty off white, but it just disappeared against the yellow walls. I'm still trying to decide where the best place to put it is. Right now it's next to the cute little Beatrix Potter tea set my mom gave Ainsley.


And I finally hung my great grandmother's quilt. Ainsley gets her middle name, Hazel, from her. I looked all over for a way to hang it that I liked and that wouldn't cost me a fortune. I didn't really like the quilt clips i saw, and all the quilt hangings I found were more than I was willing to spend. In the end I found this curtain rod on sale. I think it looks great, and looks like a nice quilt hanger, not a curtain rod.. but you tell me.

So there's my craftiness. I guess being a mother may make a crafty person out of me after all. It's a lot more fun than I thought it would be. Now I need to come up with a new project. Any ideas, let me know. I can't sew or crochet or knit. Although I am thinking of trying to make new bedding for the little family cradle we pass around, it only has one set right now. Of course that will be a job I will enlist my mom for. :)

Halloween!!

Ainsley's first Halloween! It was a lot of fun. :) We went down to Las Vegas last weekend so Tom could do some work, and so we were there for the Trunk or Treat! It was fun to get the cousins together in their Costumes. And I actually got Tom to dress up! It was great!

For Actual Halloween Ainsley and I went to the Gateway mall and walked around with our friend/neighbor/hair stylist Randilee and her two cute little girls Emi who's 6 and Tori who's 4. Then our husbands met us at the main Salt Lake City Library downtown for 'Pumpkin Time' The librarians were all dressed as characters from the Wizard of Oz and they read funny halloween stories, and we all danced to the 'Monster Mash'. And then we finished up by painting little pumpkins. :) It was a lot of fun. I figured she can't eat candy yet, I'm not sure how much she got out of this.. but it was fun for us, lol. After that we trick or treated my youngest sister, Roxanne's apartment and then went to my other sisters for dinner, movie and handing out candy. :) It was really cute to watch Candice answer the door holding Ainsley, everyone was like.. wait a minute.. did you guys not tell us... lol. And then when it was too much for her, she buried her litte face in her daddy's arms.. it was so cute! Anyway, It was a lot of fun, everyone loved our little butterfly.. She's so sweet, she smiled at everyone, i think she had a Happy Halloween. Hope all of you out there did too :)