life in general

Life is crazy. I kind of feel like I've been through a good processor this week. Granted, the moments when the food processor has been stopped have been great ones. :o) But I am so ready for the weekend and everything it is bringing me!

We've had Lindy for the past week or so while her mom was out of town. We potty trained. :P Let me tell you what, I never expected to get married and then 4 weeks later trying to get a very strong-willed 3-yr old potty trained. It was fun times. :) Lindy is on her way, not perfect at it yet, but on her way and that's a good thing.

In other news I am officially associated with the military with my spousal military i.d. and being put onto Allan's health insurance. It's good times.

This weekend Allan and I don't HAVE to do anything so we're going to fill the weekend with loads of fun things. We're going to ride around on his motorcycle, take a walk/hike (probably to Bridal Veil) and go dancing up in Salt Lake. The weather is supposed to be just perfect and I am so stoked to take full advantage of the sunshine. My emotional well-being needs an overload of Vitamin-D.

That's about all I got - next week I'm hoping to get some wedding posts up - our vendors were seriously AWESOME and I can't wait to tell you everything about everything. ;) So look forward to that. In the mean time, eat some swedish fish. That's what I'm doing. ;)

Ciao!

General Conference with a Toddler

One of the amazing things about my new life is that I am a part-time mom. It's kind of a daunting task to take on so suddenly - motherhood. In so many ways it really isn't "so suddenly" seeing as how I knew it was coming for such a long time and my role in Lindy's life isn't changing just because Allan and I got married. We're still doing things the same way...but still. To officially be a step-mom (although I hate the word step, so maybe a second mom? I don't know....) is kind of odd to think about.

Anyways. Due to drill scheduling and what not Allan had switched weekends to have Lindy over general conference. Our first non-honeymoon together....with Lindy! (hey, got to get the "normal" thing going asap right?) Knowing that this was happening I tried to be all awesome and put together something to keep Lindy entertained during General Conference. 8 hours of sitting and being told to stay quiet is REALLY hard for a toddler. Heck, trying to do that for 2 hours when what you're watching isn't Tinkerbell is hard to do at that age. ;)

So, I turned to Pinterest. I found SO MANY THINGS and started to feel a little overwhelmed at all the awesomeness out there that moms have put together. I didn't use any ONE source for what I did, but I did find just about everything that I did from this post.

So what did I do, you ask? Well, I got a bag for each member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and the First Presidency. I wrote their name on the outside of the bag and then put a different activity in each bag. Here's an idea of what was inside the various bags:

• 4 bags had 3-4 coloring pages from the Friend magazine.
• bubbles (we got special princess bubbles from walmart - they were a dollar or two I think)
• Princess coloring pages (this was a white elephant gift from several years ago, I had been saving it for the perfect time for Lindy.)
• Rip paper and glue to cardstock 
• Brown paper bags + craft supplies to make puppets
• Homemade sewing cards (took 5x7 pictures of a temple/First Presidency from the Distribution Center and used a hole punch to punch around the picture, used ribbon tied to one hole for a starter.)
• Play dough
• Apostle/First Presidency Matching game
• Vertical Drawing (taped a poster board to the wall and let her color on it.)
• Play a game on Daddy's phone (one of her church iPhone games)
• Faces game

I know there was one more, but I can't think of it. We got a little lucky in that during the Saturday morning session Lindy was playing w/her cousins while Allan and I got our washer and dryer picked up/installed in our house. :o) 

Notes: the coloring pages didn't go over super well (ESPECIALLY after some of the more "fun" activities). The ripping of paper and gluing it? PERFECT. That was one that kept Lindy entertained for an hour at least. Also a big hit? The sewing cards. Those are totally going in her Sunday quiet bag. We didn't pull out the bag to make puppets - the apostle this went with (Elder D. Todd Christofferson) went very last on Sunday afternoon and I knew it would be an hour or so project and I didn't want to start it at that time. So...we skipped that bag. Bubbles were another big hit and were used after the Sunday morning session to entertain for a while with Daddy outside. :)

Overall, it was fun times. Lindy loved getting a new "surprise" every so often. Some lasted longer than others - some got played more than once (the faces game for example). Also, I didn't stress on changing to a new bag each time a new apostle spoke. (i.e. the back to back Apostles like Holland to Oaks.) If she was entertained she got to keep going. If she was done and ready to move on, we opened the next bag. This worked really well on helping get through some of the other General Authority speakers that one cannot predict.

Whew. If you made it through all of that then you're amazing or something. ;) Several of the bags I will re-use again and the ones that are now "empty" I will re-fill with new activities for the future. Who knows if at this time we'll have Lindy for conference but there will come a day in the future where we'll always have kids around for conference....so it's good for me to have some of the stuff already put together. :o)

And now...a few pictures of the activities. :) 

Whew. you made it! Catch you later friends! 

P.S. Allan and I enjoyed conference too...so many amazing talks! I'm excited to study them together. :o)

Married! And it feels SO GOOD!

So....I kind of disappeared for a few days there huh? ;) There's something about getting married that will do that to you...lol.

Anyways, we're back from our honeymoon and have plunged feet first back into the real world. It feels nice not to have to worry about so many things on a daily basis anymore. I love that I don't have to leave my sweet husband every night anymore and that "anything goes" these days. It is a GREAT feeling.

I want to do a full-on review of ALL of my vendors along with pictures and what not, but that might be a little slow in coming. For now I just want to say that my wedding day was so lovely and perfect. Our small ceremony was just wonderful and I pretty much cried through the whole thing. :) My family is amazing and we had great  fun partying it up after dinner. I have the best husband ever and I am so excited for all the adventures we get to enjoy for the rest of our lives. :o)

Don't worry, I'll be back with gusto...in the mean time enjoy this picture from our formal photo shoot. Ciao!