A Countdown

You know that I love celebrating special occasions so of course I also love counting down to the big day. I knew that I wasn't going to see my friend Lisa on her birthday so I made her this little birthday countdown, and I slipped a little note telling her something that I love about her into each envelope. So got to open one each day until her birthday.

I meant to put a number on each envelope, but didn't have time since I had to drop it off while we were in Provo. I still think it turned out pretty cute. I think that you could do something similar for just about any special day.

Ollie at Three Months

Can you believe how big this guy is getting? We all are coming down with colds, but I had to take advantage of Creed's nap this afternoon to try to take his three month pictures.

He's also getting a little fussier, which our doctor thinks is from his reflux getting worse. Poor guy!
He still sleeps most of the time that we're out and about so many of our friends have never seen him awake.
A few of these pictures are out of focus, but I had to include them.
He already has quite the personality that keeps us laughing.
And he's losing most of his hair so he still has us wondering what color his hair will turn out to be.
When he coos, he sounds like he's saying, "Hi!"
We all call him Oliver or Ollie, but Creed calls him Olivey most of the time (when he's not insisting that we should rename him Yellow, that is)
At Three months, Creed was starting to wear 6-12 month clothes, but Ollie is much smaller. He just started wearing 3-6 month clothes, but he has enormous feet that we can't seem to keep on his feet.
For the most part, he's very serene and his little smile melts my heart.
We couldn't be happier to have him around here, we just wish he would sleep a little more at night!

Stay Classy!

We're still getting settled in our new apartment, but I promised my sister a little preview. I'm not sure what the classiest part of our temporary abode is. Maybe the awesome brown fridge (which I can't really mock because it's a bit bigger than our last fridge)?

Oh, it could be the avocado green oven.
Complete with the kind of buttons you might find on a blender

Or it might possibly be the dishwasher, which we have to roll across the kitchen to hook up to the sink and we have not been able to successfully hook up yet (although I did manage to give my fully-dressed self a shower in the middle of the kitchen)

Or maybe it's our visible friends in the hallway on the way to our bedroom and bathroom? (that's not scary with a curious three-year-old, is it?)

Oh, it could be the pink tile in the bathroom with the sparkly accent tiles.

Wait, no! The classiest thing around here is this guy!
He had the makings of a full beard going on after his razor was missing for a few days so I double-dog dared him to shave it into a handlebar mustache for a presentation he had to give in the morning, and he accepted the challenge.

Sadly, he chickened out in the morning. I was severely disappointed!

Because I Promised You Smiles From This Guy

I haven't had time to take many pictures lately so I haven't caught his grin, but here are a few adorable smiles for you!

Oh, how I love this boy

This morning, Creed woke up and stumbled to see me in the family room when he spotted the snow outside.

"Mom," he gasped, "It's snowing outside! Can I put my pajamas on like you and snuggle with you? (He slept in his clothes, we're mid-move remember) You have snowflakes on your pajamas. MOM, DID YOU MAKE IT SNOW OUTSIDE?"

Then tonight, when he was sitting next to me, he patted my hand out of the blue and said, "You are just the right mom for me."

It melted my heart.

An Update

I'm not sure that I'm ready to talk about this very long week yet. Here's the gist of it:

Packing, blah blah blah, moving to an apartment literally half the size of our house, blah blah blah, Ollie's reflux getting worse so he's not eating and none of us are sleeping, blah blah blah, more packing, blah blah blah, sending everything left in the house to storage and cleaning the house tomorrow, blahbity blah blah.

Let's think about happier things, shall we? Once upon a time, long, long ago (at least it feels that way) I had the chance to design a set of cards to be printed by my friends Eva and Kirk at Sycamore Street Press! We've had to keep everything a secret so their new items could debut at the National Stationary Show and now that it's over, they are available in the Sycamore Street Press shop so I can show them to you!

I have no idea if a single one sold, but I'm grateful for the opportunity to design them.

Eva also has some lovely new things for her Folk Line. I think this Pug belated birthday card might be my favorite.
And Amy and Kristin always come up with clever things for their line, Lark. I would love to own any of their items, but I might need about 25 of these cards!
Now, I'm off to bed to get a few hours of sleep before our big day tomorrow!

You Know How . . .

People like to theorize what they would save if their house was on fire? Well, I can now say that I officially know and the answer is my kids and that's it. Oh yes, you read that right, we had a house fire this week, but don't panic, it was mild. We were watching a movie late at night when Larry smelled smoke. We both jumped up and as we were running upstairs, all the fire alarms in the house started going off. It was terrifying. We grabbed both of our kids and ran outside. Then Larry went back in with a fire extinguisher in hand to turn off our heat and check things out, because although we could smell fire and the alarms were going off, there was no smoke and no visible fire.

A few minutes after he turned off the heat, the smelled cleared up and the alarms went off. Strange. We weren't sure what to do. Just go about our normal lives? After consulting with my dad, we decided to call the fire department and they said they would send someone to check it out, which left the four of us freezing on the porch at midnight when a firetruck pulled up and five firefighters went in to explore the house.

They thought Creed must have stuck a crayon or something in one of the vents and it melted and burned, but they took our vents apart and found nothing (that would have been very unlike Creed). They found a hole in our duct work and said the ducts were extremely hot. When they had us turn the heater back on, the smell started again and the alarms went off so they advised us to keep it off and ask our landlord to send someone to check out the furnace the next day.

It turns out that our furnace was set for sea level and never adjusted for our elevation so it was burning way too much gas and it was way too hot and indeed was setting our house on fire (we don't know whether it was lint in the vents or wood the hot vents were against or what). Scary!

I feel incredibly blessed that things worked out the way they did.

A few of you back up your hard drives after hearing about us losing ours and I was happy to hear some good came of it so I hope I can say the same thing about this experience. Please make sure that you have working smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors (ours really may have saved our lives) and a working fire extinguisher (they have expiration dates) and if you live at a high elevation, please be sure that your furnace was adjusted (it should have a neon green sticker somewhere on it if it has been adjusted).

In the meantime, our house continues to look like this

And like this

I can't wait for our move to be over in two weeks!