Catching Up

So, I stopped taking a picture a day since my external hard drive with all of my Project 365 digi kits crashed. I have still been taking a lot of pictures and usually take a picture of something on most days. Lately a lot of the pictures have been hipsta prints because lets face it, my cell phone is always near me. My big camera? Not so much. This week we had a miracle happen. My friend was able to recover all of my data off of my hard drive. I still can't believe it. It shouldn't have happened but it did and I will always be grateful. Now where do I go with project 365? I'm still debating that but for now I will continue to post random pictures on this blog since it's the easiest for me. 

We finally started our garden. It's going to be late this year. We have had so much rain and snow that I just couldn't put it in until the end of May. Aren't these peas adorable? They are much bigger now. They look like they are enjoying the cool weather. 

(This kit can be found at Sweet Shoppe Designs. It's called Me Time: Chick Flick) 

Maggie's birthday was last week. I made her this card with pictures of some of the movies that we've watched together over the years. I thought it was cute since I decided on a movie theme for her gift. I bought her the book the Help (I really loved this book), asked her to read it and got her a gift card to the movie theater. I made her promise that she would join me at the theater for the Help when it comes out in August. I can't wait to see it. 

Friday was also the last day of school. I was driving from the store to Andrew's school to deliver his teacher's gift and I noticed Daylight was still open. I served in without hesitation and got a dozen donuts thinking it would be a great treat for the kids to celebrate the last day of school. I texted Paul a picture knowing he would be so excited. He called me back a couple of minutes later and said "I'm surprised I didn't see you there." Are you kidding me? Nope, we both bought a dozen donuts. At least it was national donut day! 

We've all had a cold recently. It isn't a terrible cold but it has lasted forever! (Paul is in his second week) I bought myself some vitamins thinking it would help me get over it sooner. The day after I bought them I couldn't remember if I had taken one that day or not. I thought I would count them and see. There were a 100 tablets in the bottle so if there were 99 I knew I still needed to take one. I counted them all out and there were still 100. Hmmm, I guess Wal Mart gives out extras? (I took a picture of this because Paul thought it was hilarious that I was so concerned about not taking too many vitamins) 

I tried a new "recipe." It was suppose to be made in May but will all the end of the year craziness I didn't get to it until early June. The way I saw it made on Pinterest was you take cooked chicken mixed with marinara and place it on a wonton wrapper with some cheese and spinach leaves. Paul and I prefer pesto so I mixed my chicken with a store bought pesto (it wasn't that good) and used Parmesan and instead of spinach I used basil. It was good but I think I needed more wetness, like mozzarella cheese instead of Parmesan? I don't know, maybe just better pesto would have helped. I think the oven was too hot. The whole thing didn't get cooked and crispy but the edges were too dark. I think this recipe is worth fiddling with and really the possibilities are endless. 

One morning Andrew came out of his room with the crazy Phil Spector hair. We couldn't help but laugh. He was going to shave it into a mohawk for the last day of school but then changed his mind. He decided to cut it short for summer and then changed his mind. We don't know what is going to happen with his hair. 

On Memorial Day we went to the cemetery where Grandma Fern was buried. We got to see a lot of family plots. It was beautiful with all the flowers and flags. I'm glad we went. 

I've been busy burning pictures and things from my hard drives to DVD's to avoid disaster again. While going back through old pictures I ran across some fun pictures of the kids when there were little. Look how soft and squishy they look. I wish I knew what they had in their mouths. So cute!!!

I took this on the way home one day after rain, rain and more rain. It was so nice to see blue skies.  

Flags from the cemetery. I love our flag. 

I was going to start a new 30 day picture project for June. (Day two was, what are you wearing?) I tried taking a shot of my outfit before I went to lunch but couldn't get it to work well. I had on my cute navy blue TOMS  but couldn't get them in the shot. My arms are long but not that long. I started getting sick and stopped caring about the project. Maybe in July. 

American Fork has a place called Smart Cookie that we just discovered. They have really yummy cookies. The one with the bite missing is almond flavored. It is my all time favorite. Delish! 

I'm still  trying to figure out what the different film and lenses do in my hipsta camera ap. I was playing around and took this picture of the necklace that Maggie got me for my birthday. I wore it Sunday. 

I'm trying to convince myself to start sewing again this summer. So far I can't bring myself to do it. I've been trying out different ideas but I don't want to actually sew. 

The kids have been making friendship bracelets. They make a different kind than I used to make. I showed them this type and Andrew has been having me make them for him ever since. I posted on Facebook "When I learned how to make these in 5th grade I never could have imagined that one day I would be making them for my children."  

The last week of May I went to three movies in eight days. I don't normally do movies in the theater but Emma wanted to see Prom so I took her. Maggie and I wanted to see Something Borrowed so we went. Memorial weekend the kids wanted to see Pirates so we went again. I liked all the movies (Loved Something Borrowed) but I won't feel the need to go again until the Help in August. 

Something Borrowed was so good. I can't wait for the next one. 

Andrew outgrew his little bike this year so I bought him a new acid green Mongoose yesterday. It wasn't expensive but I think it is really cool looking. He loves it too. My baby is growing up. 

I've been on a reading kick lately

In the last couple of weeks I have managed to read three books. 

I found out about this book on a book review blog that I follow. The author of that blog loved this book.  She made me really excited to read it. It's a love story about vampire, witches and there are some daemons thrown in the to add to the problems. I like a good creature love story so I immediately ordered the book from Amazon.

I loved the love story part of this book but hated the ending and felt like it was a bit too wordy and technical at times. (The main character is a doctor of alchemy, something I know very little about, so a lot of stuff went right over my head.) This book is almost 600 pages long and really there was no conclusion to the major problem at all. Literally, it was almost all ground work. 

I have heard that there will be three books in this series but, I am used to having a conclusion at the end of a book. My friend said it best, you should have one story line that arcs across the whole series, yet you have another storyline that reaches a conclusion in each book. I couldn't agree more. If I had found this book once the series was compete I think I could forgive all the little things that bugged me. At this point I'm just irked that I have to wait who knows how long to see what happens. 

Once this series is complete (If things actually get resolved at the end.) I will probably recommend it to everyone I know. There were only maybe two swear words and the love scenes weren't too...detailed. So, in short, if you like love stories with sexy vampires and don't mind being left hanging this is a fun book that you should check out. 

A week ago Andrew asked if we could go to the library. We obliged on our way out of town. I wanted to read something that would push the Discovery of Witches out of my head. (I was really bugged that I didn't know the ending. I couldn't let it go.) I was wandering around in the fiction section and saw these books by Sue Grafton. I knew a little about the series since we had listened to one of the books on a road trip to Utah once a long, long, time ago. I didn't remember hating it so I thought I would give them a try. 

I got right into A is for Alibi. Andrew stayed home sick on Tuesday and I read almost the whole book that day. I was so glad that I had picked up B is for Burglar too. These books throw some pretty serious curse words around. It's not enough to offend me, but it may be enough that it could offend others. They are super fast, easy reads. I am really really really enjoying them. A lot. Her endings are rather abrupt but she ties everything up so I have no complaints.

I've already started C is for Corpse but I'm reading it on my Iphone so I don't know how quickly I will be able to finish it. It's such a small screen that I can only read for a bit here and there. 

Paul started reading A and he is loving her writing style too. He maybe read it more that he should have during church today. Shhh, don't tell. I can't wait for him finish it and to start B so we can talk all about it. It's rare that we read the same books so this will be a lot of fun for me.