Adios!
I am off to D.C.
I won't be blogging for a week.

Charicaturesque

A conversation at dinner last night sparked this post. If there was a movie made about you, who would play the leading role? Here are the picks for our family.

Laura-Kate Hudson
Nick-Hayden Christensen















Aubrey-Reese Witherspoon
Tim-Carlos Bernard














Myself-Elizabeth Hurley (I don't care that she's 45, she's beautiful and I want to look like her)
Rob-Seann William Scott















Mom-Jane Clayson
Dad-Sean Connery



What do you think?


And the latest additions....
Jennie-Kim Raver
Devin-Tom Hanks

YAY! We got it! We're going to move here!

The Best of Friends

WARNING: Graphic images to follow. Continue at your own risk.

You can tell a good friend by one that will kill a bug for you.

You can tell a best friend by one that will kill a monstrous bug for you.

And you can tell a lifelong friend by one that will come to your house, get behind the refrigerator, and kill the monstrous bug for you so you can cook again.

That's the short explanation. If you want ALL the details, read on.

So, many of you know that I have an insanely intense fear of spiders. Spiders... or any small creature with legs that "scurries," really. Or one that flies now that I think about it. Pretty much anything can qualify to be in my phobia as long as it's small, creepy-crawly, and utterly harmless. Some of you might be remembering the time that I lived at grandma's house (years ago), saw a spider next to my bed right before I was going to crawl in, and wouldn't sleep there for two weeks, only returning upon a massive sheet-cleaning expedition, thorough inspection of the room (by my brother-thanks Tim), and the wearing of socks tucked into my leggings.

Others of you might be remembering when we were driving to Springville on a nursing community assignment, and I was at a loss for words, but not emotion, about whatever it was on Whitney's back. It ended with us pulling over cause everyone thought I was referring to a huge tarantala or something more life-threatening. Turned out to be a moth.

My dad may be remembering the time I woke him up at 3am about the spider that scurried across the office floor, heading straight for me.


The latest incident was this past Friday. Rob was off at school, and I was having a lazy morning. Slept in, put off my to-do list, had a late breakfast, etc. So I finally decided I should clean up after myself, and I was loading the dishwasher. As I was loading a cup, I suddenly saw something fast out of the corner of my eye. I jumped, screamed, and ran out of the kitchen. When I gathered my senses a bit, I noticed that it had hidden itself in a corner of the cupboards and a wall. I looked down at my bare feet, and was suddenly very grateful for my bad habit of taking my shoes off and leaving them as soon as I come in the door. I slipped some on. I checked again on the mysterious creature, then made a dash for the bedroom where my phone was. I called Rob.

"You've got to come home right now. We've got a problem," I said.

"What is it?" wondering what could be so urgent.

I explained exactly what had happened, and gave him the horrifying description of the creature. "It's a cross between a GIANT earwig, a centipede, and a spider." My WORST nightmare.

"Just kill it," Rob encourages.

He clearly needs more time to realize I don't kill bugs.

"Um, not possible," I said. "Just skip the Costco run, and get home to kill this THING!"

All my begging was to no avail. He thought I was being a baby.

Suddenly I was screaming again. Screaming/crying/hyperventilating. The Thing had peeked around the corner at me, to observe my reaction-which he realized was harmless, and then suddenly made a mad dash behind the refrigerator.

Now it was impossible.
A-impossible for even Rob to kill it.
B-impossible for me to ever enter the kitchen again.
C-impossible for me to feel comfortable in my own home. (Seriously, I took a shower looking up, down, and around me the whole time to make sure I wasn't accompanied by any creepy-crawlys)

However, I had errands to run. I considered going out the front door and around to the garage, to avoid the kitchen altogether. But after I put on close-toed shoes, I decided to brave the kitchen, and run across the linoleum to the garage door.

Luckily my errands included a Smart Cookie stop with friends. Tangent--Smart Cookie closed on Friday, and added to my grief. I have loved that place for four years, and it has been an integral part of my college experience! It was a sad goodbye, to say the least. Here we are at Smart Cookie for the last time.



















And in the telling of my day, I relayed the horrific earwig/centipede/spider story. And their reaction was this, "Ah! Let's go kill it! We'll come over right after and find it and kill it."

Lifelong friends.

Here are pictures of the adventure that followed. No explanation needed.

Except for that this is what we were dealing with.





And this is what they dealt.










































Another qualification of a lifelong friend is if you made it through this post. I applaud you.

Quilting Queens

So our family has a tradition of having "Girl's Night Out" while the boys in our lives go to Priesthood. We usually do something to pamper ourselves, like a pedicure or shopping. But the last two sessions, we've gotten quite domestic. Last October, my mom and I made homemade peach jam! A first for me... and it actually turned out great! My husband still praises me every time he makes a PB&J sandwich. :) thanks, honey.

This time, being inspired by Mama Chaves, we all made (or started, rather) QUILTS! How much more domestic can you get?? Laura and Aubrey started theirs the previous week to get a little head start, and they look so good! I saw Laura's design (which looked really hard, but I like a little challenge...) and decided to do the same one. I went and picked all my fabrics, and have now become ADDICTED. Seriously, I find just about any excuse to leave my to-do list behind, so we can go up to Draper and I can work on my quilt! It's become quite the obsession.

Who knew I'd ever become a quilter?! And at the ripe age of 22 :) Maybe I can get really good one day. Aaah, to dream.

Here are some pics of the works in progress:


Mama Chaves and her now-finished quilt... with a red border that adds a lot! Look how cute she is. Such a quilter at heart.













My squares all put together and ready for the border (and a close up... the lighting's not great but the fabrics are really bright)










Aubrey's super bright and fun quilt for Maya (hence the "M")











Laura's awesomely inspiring "vintage" quilt.





















And a pic with the babies, cause they are too stinkin cute to leave out! Rob holding Maya, myself holding Jack :)

I finally went RUNNING!

I know you probably don't know what kind of an accomplishment this is for me... But it's HUGE. I got up early and went running today! Considering I haven't made any sort of effort in months to keep the running muscles in shape, I'm pretty proud of myself. I used to be an avid runner, timing my miles, training for races, the works. (Let me clarify: small races. Avid may be a little bit of an overstatement, but I was a runner nonetheless) Here's a pic to prove it.

I have a new goal for the summer: be ready to run the Provo Canyon Half Marathon in August. (Jennie, you better be there) And I'm publishing it on my blog so you can all hold me to it!!

garage door

So when I forget to take pictures, I paint them. As of now.

We had a relatively funny incident happen this weekend that I wanted to share, but without pictures (which are the heart of blogging) I was hesitant. Here is a decent depiction of what I'm about to tell you.

So our garage door has been on it's last leg for a while now. We know this because for two weeks we had to wait as we shut the garage door, so that just as it reached the ground we would press the button twice more, and pray it stayed down. And then one day, it went 3/4 of the way up, next time only 1/2 up, etc. etc.

But my genius father (I'm not saying that because I think he'll read this. He won't. But he's seriously a genius.) knows how to fix anything and everything, so he came down one night, and VOILA, it was fixed!

So Rob and I went out with Tony and Lyndsey (who we LOVE) the next evening, and upon our return at about 12:45pm, the garage door only groaned and moved up approximately 3 inches. Uggh. So I start looking for my keys, because I have the only front door key. And to my dismay, we quickly discovered the keys were locked in the house. So we go around back and test every possible door and window there is. Nothing.

So just as we were about to give up and go sleep on Tony & Lyndsey's air mattress (which actually sounded intriguing), Rob had the inspired idea to put the car jack under the garage door! We barely squoze (is squoze a word?) it under there, and as he cranked, I stuffed bricks under the corner. (As you can see in the left hand corner of my drawing.) We felt pretty ghetto at 1:30am cranking our garage door and sticking bricks one at a time under it to hold it up. When there were three bricks and the jack wouldn't go anymore, it was my job to squeeze under the 8 inches of space.

That was a task. So as I'm tilting my head sideways to fit under the door, I suddenly got very... claustrophobic, or whatever phobia it is that freaks you out that your head's gonna get cut off by a garage door. And on my 2nd or 3rd try, I finally moved down to pushing the boobs through, which wasn't the most comfortable thing in the world. But got through, no problem.

And then it came to the butt. Oh man. I always thought I had a relatively flat butt, but no siree. Rob actually had to push my butt down for me to get under that dang door!

But then, I was IN.

And we slept on something a little more comfortable than an air mattress.