Flying indoors

Ahhhh, it's Christmas break.  I love Christmas break.  I can finally breathe.  But that is not really what this post is about.  This post is about flying indoors.  This past week it was my nephew, Adin's, 12th birthday.  To celebrate it my sister invited us down to Universal City Walk to go indoor skydiving.  Indoor skydiving is not really indoors, it is more like a giant clear tube outside where everyone can see how silly you look, but it is loads of fun.  

 The wind is moving at about 400 miles per hour which is why our faces all look a little strange.

 Eli is so flexible, the wind nearly folded him in half backwards.  At first he wasn't sure if he wanted to try it, but once he saw that they were fully in control of the wind he was ready for anything.

 Donald was really good at it, those long arms and legs really come in handy.

There is the birthday boy!

 I just had to throw this one in of my sister Tina.  Her face is classic!

Thanks for including us Tina, we had a blast.  Happy Birthday Adin!

Lake Mead 2012

It's September, and September to my family means Lake Mead.  

We have gone every year that I can remember of my whole life.  I love this tradition and I love that I can pass it on to my children. Here are this year's best pics.

Eli

Emily

Donald

Nathan

 As always we had a blast, wish it lasted longer.  See you next year Lake Mead!

A Moment 5 years in the Making

For the last five years I have had to hound Donald about wearing a bite plate, flossing through wires, no chewing gum and the worst words in the English language, "put your bands on".  But no more!  This morning, at 10 o'clock, his braces were removed.  Yipee! That was the best dentist visit ever.

Now I just need to get used to all those teeth.  Oh and constantly remind him to where the retainers. Oh and deal with Eli's braces.  Yeah ok, so the torment is not completely over, but at least there was one little triumph. 

I'm Separating!

I recently realized that I have become so addicted to design/deco/crafty projects and blogs that they are taking over my family blog.  I want to keep this blog for my family so we can all remember all the things we are going through, but I also really like posting about the new things that I learn and tryout, so....I have decide to separate them into two different blogs.  This one will still be my family blog and then I have created a new one for my projects.  That one I would actually like to turn into something bigger so if you are interested please take a look at it and let me know what you think.  Here is the new blog name:  http://theoldbarndoor.blogspot.com/   The first post on there explains the name.

More Hawaii Pictures

I hung out with my sister Tina this weekend and we finally exchanged photos from Hawaii.  Here are some of my favorites that they took. 

 What a handsome kid!

 I'm not really sure how much power Eli provided, but he sure did put in the effort.  I think he was paddling the entire time Don was. 

 Me and my sister in law Jackie

 I don't know if you can tell by their faces, but that water was very, very cold.

 Jana, Emily and I kayaking.

 Donald, Nathan and Adin kayaking.

 Brian and Jackie kayaking.

 Donald on a zipline.

 Donald, Adin and Nathan

 The boys and Iayn

 I think this was right before they went down the first zipline.

 This was on one of the last ziplines.

Eli boogieboarding

Thanks for the pictures Tee!

Reminders

School started this week.  Eli is in 4th now and Donald is in 9th.  There is just a little part of you that aches when you think about your kid starting high school.  And just as Donald joins this new world of too many teenagers I have had a week full of reminders of just how fast he is growing up.

Reminder #1-

 

Donald has been swimming for only two years and last night his feet started getting cramps because his fins are too small for him again.  That means that just in those two years he has gone from barely fitting into the yellow fins (size 5-7) to in between the black and the dark green (size 11).  Maybe he has been walking in fertilizer or something because his feet are growing like crazy.  He can wear Don's shoes now, which is why Don can never find his flip flops. 

Reminder #2- 

On facebook this week a friend of mine posted this picture of when Donald was in Kindergarten.

 He was so small and cute.

Now he looks like this, still cute, but a lot less small (considering he is now taller than I am).  He has grown over 6 inches in the last year. 

Reminder #3-

He has a phone like most other teenagers but now instead of messages about video games he has way too many texts from girls. 13 year old girls are crazy.   Luckily he understands that already.  This week he had a girl ask him if he loved her.  I think he responded by jumping in the pool.

Before I know it he will be driving away.  It is strange...I don't really want him to still be little and it isn't really that I don't want him to grow up.  It is more like I don't know how well I have done up to this point and it seems like things are unfinished.  I wonder if I will always feel like that.  I guess he is growing up faster than I can figure out how to raise him.  Regardless, here we are joining the world of early morning seminary, getting his braces off in 26 days (yea!) and geometry homework.

Good luck in 9th grade Donald (I'll be waiting in the car).
 

Gigantic Whiteboard

Don's company just moved offices and he was faced with an empty square room with wood paneling.  I have tried to come up with something that could occupy some of that blank space, but I am limited because I can't make it girly.  We looked around a little to find something that wouldn't look too small or cluttered, but have found nothing he likes, so we decided to make something.  He said he wanted to have a calendar included, so this is what I came up with.

We got a big piece of paneling from Home Depot and built a frame around it, then I added lots of vinyl. 
It is huge so it fills the whole wall and it actually might help him organize a little.  But if nothing else, it is really cute (in a non girly way).

My little clock

I hope my mom doesn't get mad at me, although she does still live in the stone age as far as computers go so she probably will not even see this.  A few years ago she gave me a cute little clock.

 It used to match a lot of things in my house, but now I have nothing that is cherry wood, so I taped it off, painted it white and distressed it a little bit.

It matches much better now.

Homemade Big Frames

After taking so many pictures in Hawaii I wanted to be able to display them in my living room.  But in order to do that I needed a couple new ideas.  This was the living room before.

 It's a pretty big wall and pretty big frames are pretty big expensive, so we decided to build our own.

 After we built them and painted them I put some left over beadboard into the big one.

Then I put each picture in a smaller frame and attached four frames to the beadboard.

 

Isn't it cute!?!

Here it is on the wall.  I think we should have made it a little bigger because the wall still has so much space, but I think we are going to install some sconce lights on each side of it instead.  That room needs more light anyway.  The other wall has new pictures also since the ones that were replaced were at least 4 years old.

 Once I started moving things around I felt like I needed to freshen the hall wall up a little.

 

So I added a little vinyl

The smaller-large frame that we made was for the family tree that I made.  It is for the Stewart family which is my dad's mom's side.  The trunk has my great grandparents Wendell and Faye Stewart and they had 7 children so there is a main branch for each one.  My grandma Elaine's branch is second from the bottom on the right side.  It has three smaller branches for my dad, my uncle David and my aunt Gaylene.  Then my dad's branch has four smaller branches, one for Rhonda, Tina, Jana and Me.  Then mine has four little green leaves with our names on them.

We hung that one in the front room.  I'm so proud of our frame making skills.  I think next we are going to frame our bathroom mirror and we are also going to create a massive white board for Don's office.