Easter Weekend (backtracking a bit)

I forgot to write about Easter! The Thursday night before Easter I had a fun evening in Park City with my mom who was getting ready to move to Cedar City. They left on Easter day and I miss her terribly, but I'm excited to visit her down in beautiful southern Utah. We spent the rest of the weekend with David's family in Ogden playing games, watching movies, and eating lots of wonderful food and sweets. I put on a scavenger hunt for the little ones on Saturday thanks to my Dad and his witty rhyming skills. He used to write out an entire day's worth of clues and send me all over the farm in Oregon, hunting down a basket of goodies. I loved it.

Sunday morning church was wonderful and then to our surprise and great lady in the ward invited us over to her house, or farm I should say, to see an entire little family of baby chicks see just bought. It was so fun for all of the kids to hold and touch these sweet little critters. She also let us visit her other animals which included chickens, goats (which she sheers to make and sell angola wool!), rabbits, and sheep. We had a blast.

That was our Easter! I'm very excited for next year when Hazel has a little better idea of what's going on. She does seem to enjoy being around her little cousins who are equally fascinated with her, especially Sam who is about seven months older and is determined to toughen her up and push her around a bit. It was a great fun weekend.

Janelle

Life is goooood

Here's an update on the Phipps! David is AMAZING. I can brag about him all I want because he rarely if ever looks at this blog and he won't even know it. Work is going even better than we imagined at this point. When he switched to commercial real estate we knew that we were probably going to be very poor for another two years or more (but hey, we're good at it!). We really have learned so much through the experiences we've had our first two years of marriage. Knowing that we took the more difficult route by being self-employed has helped us to be patient, frugal, and more responsible with what we do have. We are starting to see the blessings pour in as David is meeting the right people at the right time in his career. Just the other day the mayor of Ogden called David's dad (and partner) and told him that he wanted them in charge of a deal bringing a large credit union into Ogden (into one of the buildings that David and his dad have the lease on). He told David's dad to tell this company that he and David are the best in Ogden and come highly recommended. I'm so proud of my husband and his hard work!

I am still working with the same author on his novel. As is to be expected, it will be a gradual process and I'm hoping to be nearing a final draft by this fall. I also started writing a short story for a competition held by a magazine called New Letters. I've never written a short story before let alone entered one into a contest, but you have to start somewhere! I have put off writing for so long now, waiting until I had enough time to put all my heart into it. Well, you never have enough time and now that I've started I feel addicted to it; I think about my characters during the day and I can't wait to get even just a few minutes at the computer to write another scene and try a new angle. I love it.

Hazel is crawling now. She does an army crawl, pulling herself forward by her arms, switching left and right, until she gets to her destination (which is usually Ritz crackers that I use at bait). She tries to make her way over to wherever I am, leaving a trail of crumbs behind her. I have to start baby-proofing things now, oh dear.

Have a great conference weekend!

Sometimes you just get the giggles

My little ham

I couldn't resist posting these pics. They are my favorites of Hazel right now. She is such a smiley girl.

White powder mustache

I left Hazel in her room alone for a minute and when I came back she had a white powder mustache. I looked around at the floor and saw amidst the toys and books, the bottle of baby powder. The best part was her smile, like she knew she had gotten into something that she shouldn't have. She posed so perfectly for this shot!

Walnut Gathering

Last summer I was doing dishes when I heard something fall onto our roof and then roll all the way down to the gutter. It kept happening until we figured out that it was walnuts from our walnut tree beside our house! When fall rolled around they were everywhere and we'd get a couple of Indian families that didn't speak a lick of English come knocking on our door asking if they could gather them. When it was getting closer to Christmas time, we decided that we should go and collect them to give as gifts to a few of our friends, so I started telling our visitors that they could only gather a little bit. Because they obviously didn't understand me or my attempt at sign language, they still left with bagfuls, and soon after that it snowed, so we ditched the idea for Christmas gifts. However, now that the snow has melted, there are still walnuts everywhere! For family night a week ago, David suggested/insisted that we still gather them even though I think they've gone bad by now.

Here are some pics of us gathering our walnuts.



The walnuts are still in bags in back of the house so we have a running bet to see who's right about whether they are still edible. The funny thing is, our bets are always for massages from the other person and I've lost so many times that I now owe David about 4 hours of massage. So now whenever I win, it's really like I'm just paying off some of my debt.

Here are some of the projects I finished for Hazel's room. The mirror with Hazel's name is hanging above her crib and then the polka-dotted frame is one I found a while ago at DI. It was banged up and had polka dots that were too symmetrical and a cheesy saying printed along the bottom. I painted over it a few time, drew my own polka dots, then sanded, painted, and stained it. I still have a lot to learn about the whole staining and antiquing wood process, but so far I'm enjoying it and finding that you can really do whatever you want!

Janelle