Exciting upgrade

This isn't exactly what our van looks like, but pretty close. We have a newer car parked in our carport this evening. A friend of ours buys and sells wholesale cars and he found this car last weekend. It was a pretty good deal and we are in need of a bigger car.

I have been driving a truck very similar to this:


Imagine the backseat with door to door carseats! No room to breathe, yet alone move! It is insane to think that I could even fit 3 carseats in the back.

Now, I have more room and better gas mileage! What a way to upgrade and no car payments, yeah!

Bountiful Baskets

We finally have a co-op coming into the valley, well one that I actually know of, let's put it that way. It is: http://bountifulbaskets.org Each basket is $15 and for the first basket you pay a one fee of $3. There is also $1.50 handling fee.
I ordered one basket and I also added on a 25 lb. bag of carrots for $10, which we are chopping up and putting in our freezer. A couple of months ago we found a freezer at a garage sale for $50, very exciting!

They had extra add-on's and I believe they change them so they aren't the same. They offered for an extra $10 5 loaves of bread and them some kind of cake and of course the carrots too.

For my basket of $19.50 (first time basket) I got:
8 peaches, 8 apples, 7 bananas, 4 avocados, a coconut, head of cabbage, head of romaine lettuce, small bag of baby carrots, 2 cucumbers, small container of blackberries, container of strawberries, and 6 tomatoes.

All of the produce is in great condition and not overly ripe, so I will have time to use it all! I can get this every 2 weeks, so I am thinking of ordering 2 baskets every 2 weeks and volunteering sometime, then you get more! Great way to get good produce. To get organic, there is an extra fee.

I know that this is available in Utah, Idaho, Arizona, Nevada and Eastern Washington (sorry family).

Too Cute!

I recently went on a trip to Washington state to see the birth of my sister's baby boy, Jaike. While we were up there we went to Salt Creek, a place just west of Port Angeles. We would always go camping and explore the tide pools. It is a great place and was a gorgeous day, amazingly!
I haven't gotten all of my pictures off my camera yet, but I do have this one of Carter enjoying the rocky beaches, enjoy!

Ribbon board

First off, Happy Birthday to my mom! She doesn't look at my blog, but I will wish her a happy day anyway!

After finding this awesome, Sister's Stuff, I saw this fun ribbon board to hang bows for Leilani. I have been wanting to make it for about a month and finally got around to it today.

It was so easy. Bryce cut a board to the size I wanted. The girls on the blog used hot glue to attach everything to the board. Instead of hot glue, I used a staple gun. I think this will hold up better then glue, we shall see.

Attach batting to the board, then cover with fabric, make sure that you pull tight so it is nice and smooth on the front. Cut out whatever kind of ribbon you would like, attach to the top and bottom and attach ribbon for hanging on the top, cover with paper to finish and voila!

I found ribbon for a dollar a spool at Michael's, which wasn't bad since there is still some ribbon left. I have found packages of ribbon at Target for a dollar that have quite a few spools, but each spool doesn't have a lot of ribbon on them, so I don't know how well they would work for the board.

Very inexpensive project. My thinner ribbon I have had lying around the house, so that was even nicer and Bryce already had the board, what a deal!

Here is the finished project:

Now, I need to fill it up and make some more bows!

Let the hunt begin!

Since I blogged about Leilani's birthday, I noticed quite a few pictures from the past month or so.

Previous to Easter, we had 3 egg hunts! Crazy! 2 of them were locally and we had 1 here at home. It was a lot of fun to see the kids, especially Carter. He loved carrying them around.
Warning: There are a lot of pictures!

Officially 3!

Today was Leilani's birthday. We had a blast yesterday, but she went to bed with a fever and continued with one today, hopefully it will break tonight!

I still can't believe that she is 3! It makes me sad, but happy to see how grown up she is. She is such a little lady and turning into quite the little mother with her baby brother, Carter. She is always there to help and comfort.

Her year in development:
Mastered her tricyle, enough to ride the "Big One" around the yard.
Officially potty-trained, and even at night, wahoo!!!
She can write her "L", most of the time.
Count to 10, with a little help.
Knows her shapes and colors.
She is learning how to use her scissors, on paper only!
Her language skills surprise me everyday!

This darling girl is one of the many lights of my life. I have a cousin that call her kids sunshines and I love that. She sure is one of mine! I love her so much and feel blessed to have a daughter. We have our moments with each other, because she is so independent. I have to love her for that, because I think she will be so much stronger for it as she gets older.

A few days old, what a darling baby she was!

First birthday, still my favorite picture to date!

Her new found love of horses, oh she loves them! Hope to get her riding someday?

Happy Birthday my sweet Leilani! I love you so much and here's to another wonderful year with my baby girl!

Leilani's Birthday Party

We celebrated Leilani's birthday today, since her birthday is on Sunday this year. She wanted a princess party so that is what we did. There were not a lot of princess details just the castle cake, some princess foam stickers and the girls got a glow in the dark wand and the boys chose an ax or a sword, Carter got a big foam hammer, quite cute!

We stuck with a luau theme with delicious huli huli chicken, prepared and cooked by my wonderful husband, macaroni salad (courtesy of L&L Hawaiian BBQ), rice (of course) and some Hawaiian sweet rolls, recipe to come later.

It was fun, the kids had a blast and the parents/adults were able to socialize, which is always a good thing.

Leilani was very adamant that she is still 2 and will not be 3 until tomorrow, her actual birthday! She makes me laugh! I love this little girl, happy birthday party!

Here is the castle cake. It is hard to frost when your frosting is melting! It was fun to make though.