These are a few of my favorite things...

So, I've committed to post a blog about once a week, give or take. So for this post, I decided to make a list of some of my favorite things, in no particular order. Now, let me make one thing clear. This is a list of things that you wouldn't necessarily already know about me. I'm not listing the obvious ones like my family, church, friends etc. because those are the duh ones! (of course, if you know me at all, some of these will be DUH ones, too! So, without further adieu........

* Musical Theather
I like musical theater in ANY form . Dinner theaters are one of my favorites, but I also love actually going to the Buell in Denver and seeing the big Broadway stuff like Phantom and Wicked (my favorite Broadway show). I'm even a sucker for movie musicals like The Sound of Music, Moulin Rouge, Newsies, and yes, even the HSM movies! : )

* Anything Cheese-Flavored
I LOVE cheese, in any variety. I love cheese sliced right off of the cheese block, cheese flavored chips, cheese crackers, pretzels dipped in cheese, cheese curds. If cheese is involved, I'm a fan!

*Spring
Spring means that Summer is right around the corner! : )

* Movies
I'm a big movie nut. If I've got an evening planned with my husband or friends, it usually involves going to the movie. I love getting swept away in a really good story and escaping the real world for 120 minutes of pure entertainment. I think that if I weren't Mormon and actually watched the rated R stuff, I would seriously consider becoming a movie critic. I mean, what better job is there then to sit and watch movies and get paid to tell people your opinions!? : ) Those are two things that I can do really well!!!

* Jigsaw Puzzles
I have a thing for puzzles! I love them and am a pretty fast puzzle-puter-togetherer. (I think that I just made that word up!) My puzzle of choice is a 550-piece puzzle. Any more than that and it is too much for me. I'm not a fan of the 1000-piece jobs. That's too much puzzle for one sitting and I like to sit down, put a puzzle together and then put it away. I don't do it for the finished product, I do it for the challenge of finding where everything goes.

* The smell of fresh-cut grass and the look of a freshly-mowed lawn

* The look of a wet, just washed-down deck and patio
Thank you, Dad for that obsession!

* Listening to a baby laugh

* My DVR on my tv!
I don't know how I ever lived without it!

* My computer
Ditto from DVR!

* Google and Snopes.com

* Watching Drew (and Dad and Josh) play Softball
LOVE that! It's so fun to go to the ball fields and watch them compete, even if they don't win every time. Just one question, though...why have Thursdays been the worst weather days of the week since the season started!? Chalk it up to Murphy's Law, I guess.

* Games in any form
Board, computer, video, cards - you name it, I like to play it.

* Banana Cream Pie and Rootbeer Floats

* Kohl's

* Mexican Food

* A "just cleaned" house (for the 10 minutes that it lasts!)

* Letting my hair down, being silly, and having a really good laugh

So, I'm sure that when I post this, I'll think of a thousand other things that I should have included, but here's what I could come up with for now. Do any of these things make your list?

A bucket of paint, some willing helpers and one painted baby later!

So, if anyone keeps tabs on my sisters and their blogs, you'll see that we've been doing some remodeling to our homes recently.

About a month ago, I got a wild hair to re-do some rooms in my house. The whole thing actually started because I wanted to re-do my living room and kitchen. But, because it was going to be alot easier to re-do my bedroom, that's where we started! So, Mom, Kelsey, Mal and I made a deal. We would get together once a week at someone else's house and help them paint and re-do whichever room they wanted to do. I was the lucky one that got to go first. So, they came up and we painted my room and bathroom. It's actually been getting done in stages, so that's why it took me so long to post this. But, I'm sooo happy with the way it turned out!

So, check out my new room! It was so fun to do. I wanted a calm color in my room this time around. I loved my red from before, but it was time for a change. I was able to take a lot of the elements that I already had and just give them a makeover! The shelves above the bed just needed a coat of brown paint and then I painted the candle holders blue and bought some white candles. The ties around the candles are done with the same fabric that I used for the canvas wall hangings that are on each side of the window. The vinyl on the blue stripe are dandelions and little "whispys" that I actually created on my vinyls software.

Mallory and I did these canvas wall hangings with some fabric, ribbon and buttons. I love them! They add a really nice touch.

No pictures in these frames yet, but at least you get the idea!

Here is another item from my room that just needed a makeover. Originally, it was red with some french script on it. So, I stripped it down and just painted it brown with a white wash and then put corner vinyl scrolls on it.

This clock was originally red with french style script as well. I painted the face the same blue as my wall stripe with a brown wash and a washed brown edge and then did the numbers in a brown vinyl. To tie it into the room, I did a big dandelion in white down the center and a few "whispys" at the top.

This is the shelf above my computer. I decided to put the same corner scrolls on this frame that are on the brown mirror so that they could help tie eachother in to the room. I'm still working on getting pictures into the frames...

So, this is what happens when you aren’t watching out for the wandering kid in the room! : ) I don’t know why we didn’t think that Cade would try to taste the paint! We were laughing about him having it all over his hand and before we got it cleaned up from his hand, he stuck his hand in his mouth! Duh!

Here's the new bathroom. Picutres just don't do it justice, but you get the idea! I wanted to carry in the same colors from the bedroom but with a different twist. I put polka dots around the whole bathroom and I LOVE it!

This rug was actually the whole inspiration for the polka dots!

Double-Digits!

So, Kaylie recently turned 10. What!? How is it possible that I'm old enough to have a 10 year old? She's halfway to adulthood! She's officially in the double-digits. This was a pretty big milestone for us and a huge wake-up call for me. I have found myself wondering if I'm doing all that I can for my kids - am I teaching them everything that they will need to know to make it in this crazy world? Am I preparing them for the battles that they will face in life? If I haven't, is it too late!? I mean, holy cow, my baby is already 10!!!! Scary! But, I guess that all that I can do is start with today and go from there, right!?

Okay, enough of that talk and on to the fun stuff! : )

So, for Kaylie's b-day this year, we met Mom, Dad, Kelsey (Kelsey and Kaylie have the same b-day...they get to share their fun day with eachother!) Mallory, Josh and Cade and then Jaris and his family to go swimming. We had a great time at the funplex. Hence the name, "fun"plex, right!? I love going during family swim. You don't have to deal with all of the snot-nosed teenagers! Because the weather decided to dump snow on us that morning, we all parted ways after swimming so that everyone could get home safely. So, we came home and did cake and presents. It was a really fun day!

Here's Kayie's haul this year! She is really into hands-on things right now, so she got a Science Experiment kit, some t-shirts and decals to design her own shirts, a couple of canvas water-color pictures and a rock polisher! She also got some new earrings and pink gloves, a Hannah Montana scarf and a High School Musical hat.

This year, Kaylie wanted to help me make her cake. So, as you can see, it turned out really "nice"! : ) She did a good job, but we are not cake decorators! (sbviously!) But, she loved it, so that's all that matters, right!?

Confessions of a basketball coach/mom

So, this year we decided to let Kaylie and Blake play basketball through the Evans Rec. Center. It was really fun to watch them play and reminisce about the good old days with Dad as my basketball coach in the GLVRA league in Niwot. Don't ask me what GLVRA means, cause I have no idea...that's just what my jersey always said! : )

I decided to coach Blake's team because they were desperate. Dad, I'm truly sorry for times that I didn't pay attention during basketball practice! Have you ever tried to teach 5 and 6 year olds something that's totally foreign to most of them!? Well, if you want an experience like no other, let me suggest teaching them basketball. It is like herding turtles! I will admit that I came home from Wednesday night practices some weeks wondering what in the heck I was thinking when I'd signed up to do this. A lot of the parents remarked that I had the patience of a saint, but little did they know that years of teaching primary had prepared me for this. My kids were soo cute! I was so proud of them. Blake is a pretty good basketball player, when he feels like being a part of the team. He made the very first basket in our first game! By the end of the season, the kids were actaully doing really well. In our last game everyone on the team made a basket. In fact, for a few kids, it was their only basket all season! Now that it's over, I actually find myself missing those kids. Jackson is already expecting me to coach his team next year because he'll be old enough to play and by then, I'll probably have forgotten my frustrations and sign up to coach again. Maybe that's why the time between seasons is such a long time - it gives us time to forget!

This is the first year that either of the kids played basketball for an organized team, but Kaylie really has a natural talent for the game. She did awesome! I'm hoping that she'll want to continue playing and hopefully she'll get comfortable enough with the game to get a little more agressive...she was always afraid to steal the ball from the other team because she didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings or have anyone mad at her! She definitely didn't get THAT trait from me! I wasn't known as the "nice" one when I played basketball.

During the basketball season this year, Kaylie also participated in a basketball skills program called TriStar. It is a skills program that tests her ability to shoot, dribble and pass. This is the second year that she's participated in this program. The first level of the competition is against other kids at her school and she took 1st Place! There are different levels, depending on the kids' ages, but she scored the highest score of everyone, even the boys! That's my girl! : ) Needless to say, we were so proud of her. Last year she actually made it all the way to the state finals, but they were held on a Sunday and so she chose not to participate. This year she didn't continue on past the city finals, but that's alright! There's always next year, right!?

Cami and Kelsey made me do it!

Yep, call it guilt, coercion or whatever you'd like, but it all boils down to me starting a blog! With more and more of my family and friends living far away, this just seems like that best way to keep up with everyone's busy lives. Cami keeps saying that I need to start a blog and Kels has been trying to talk me into it as well, so Kelsey and I made deal last week - she'd jump on the facebook train if I'd jump on the blogging train...choo-choo...all aboard! Here goes...I have a feeling it's going to be a bumpy ride! : )