End of The Peaden Life: Volume IV Part I

Due to our lengthy-worded and pictured-loaded posts we had to break 2013 into two blog books. 

The saga continues in The Peaden Life: IV -- Part II 

Best Friends

I've had a lot of amazing friends in my life. In fact, when I start thinking about it I am overcome with gratitude for all the amazing people in my life.

So so so many "best friends" over the years. Friends from when I was in diapers, friends from elementary school, friends from high school, friends from college, friends who also happen to be family, and the list keeps going on and on! 

I'm a lucky girl. 

That's why it makes me so happy to see Lydia already starting our her life with such a good best friend. These girls really do love each other!

Aren't these girls the cutest? And of course, the handsome Carson loves to play with them as well. Ashley gave Lydia this little outfit that matches Elsie's for her birthday. They have two outfits that match and it is so fun on the days that we just happen to dress them the same. (Although, we aren't above dressing them the same on purpose.) Lydia and I are lucky to have best friends like Elsie and Ashley. 

(Note to self: Next time we are together... take a picture! It's not just the little ones that need pictures.)

Ashley has been such a lifesaver to me over the past two years. I can't express how grateful I am for someone who doesn't judge my messy house, or my bad hairday, or my mistakes that I make on this journey called adulthood/motherhood. We try to get together once a week or so - but we do talk on Gmail chat on a regular basis. We share good articles to read, stories about our crazy kids, or whatever else strikes our fancy. It's such a nice touch of reality after a day at home with just Lydia to keep me company. Last night around nine I was finishing up some wedding announcements when Ashley said something. David heard the computer beep and asked "How is your best-friend-Ashley doing?" It's hard to find the words to express how grateful I am. 

And while we are on the subject of best friends... one of my very best friends from Morgan High, who later became a roommate at Utah State, got married this week! Natalie Nicholas is now Natalie Montez.  (She is pictured above as a bridesmaid at my wedding.)

I was so sad that I couldn't attend the wedding and we almost weren't able to attend the reception. It was on a Friday night and we had two other things that we had to do at the same time. I was visiting with Ashley earlier in the day and was telling her about how sad I was because Natalie has been such a good friend to me and I really wanted to be there - but I didn't know how I could make it work. After I left her house, I called David and mentioned how I was feeling. He immediately said "Lets just do it. We can make it work." I was so grateful for his willingness to drive to Morgan just for the evening. I helped David's mom with some things that she needed, did wedding announcements, then at six o'clock we went to a neighborhood recipe book party (I had invited a lady from my ward to attend with me and volunteered to bring something, then the date got changed, but I felt like I still really needed to go). We stayed for exactly 45 minutes, then got in the car and drove to Morgan. We made it for the last half hour of Natalie's reception and it was beautiful. 

I'm so glad that we were able to go and see Natalie on her special day. She has been such a good friend to me and I think I would have always regretted not being there for her. We've been through a lot together, from reading all the Harry Potter books before the 7th book came out and learning to speak with a British accent to her being the first person we told after we got engaged. As David told me recently "The great thing about best friends is that they are always there for you. It's important to be there for them, too." I was also really glad because we were able to stop at my parents house for a couple of hours before we headed home. It was SO nice to be with them. (My dad had called on his way through Lehi a couple of days prior to stop by to see us, but we just happened to not be home and I was so sad to miss him. So I'm glad we were able to go up there and visit.) 

I really have been blessed with such amazing friends. I hope that Lydia is as blessed as I have been. (I'm even more blessed to be able to be married to my best friend of all!)

Friday!

1- This week has been filled with our little darling signing "more", "please", and "all done". I've been working with Lydia for months trying to get her to start signing, to no avail. But when we were at the grocery store on Monday, we walked past a carton of strawberries and Lydia immediately started signing "more". I was amazed! I asked her if she wanted "more strawberries"and she started pointing and signing "more" immediately. It was so cute, I picked those strawberries right up and put them in our cart. (I now realize how hard it is not to give in to whatever your child wants. It was just so sweet that she was asking for strawberries.) It's like something clicked because practically overnight she was able to sign all three things. The first couple of days were filled with endless hours of her signing "more-please" and David and I giving her cracker after cracker after cracker. It was just too cute to resist. It melts my heart when she signs please (which she does with two hands rubbing the side of her chest instead of with one hand on the middle of her chest) - it's so cute. I also love that she whines like 100% less than she was doing before - because now she has some ways that she can communicate. So nice. Right now we are working on "food", "thank you", and "thirsty". Next up: "mom" and "dad".

2- It's the Lehi Roundup this week and that has been fun. Lydia and I went to a bird show at the Hutchings Museum for a little while, then the next day we all went to the boutique booths and walked around, and we have big plans for the parade and petting zoo tomorrow. We love living in Lehi!

3- This week, David's parents finally had to put his grandma in a Memory Center care facility. David helped his mom move the big heavy stuff from his grandma's house to her room in the Legacy Center on Wednesday night, and then yesterday Lydia and I went up and helped her move all of the other stuff. We hung picture frames, arranged clothes and knick-knacks, and got everything ready for her move. Grandma McAllister is NOT happy about it, and that makes it so hard. But she can't live by herself anymore and her memory is so bad that she needs constant care and attention. This is the best thing for her, but It's a hard transition. It's been an emotional thing for everyone involved. We can only pray that she will adjust quickly and be happy (and safe) there.

4- We had a fun girl's day with Julie, Avery, Olivia, Wendy, Aubrey, Melissa, Amy (and Zachary) this week before Julie and the girls had to head back to Indiana. We met up at Wendy's house and played for a while, then ate some yummy pizza. Lydia and I are blessed to have such wonderful family.

5-I've been feeling a little down this week for various reasons. But David has done so much to take care of me. He has let me sleep in while he watches Lydia in the mornings, he has done the dishes and helped clean the house, he has let me be grumpy and provided as many popsicles as I wanted (and even volunteered to re-watch the last episode of Eureka with me because I was so grumpy about it the first time we watched it). He knows when to try to cheer me up and when to just let the sadness pass on it's own. I guess I'm just feeling really grateful that he is so good to me. I can't imagine my life without him by my side. He is such a good and kind man. I know that I posted this picture just a little while ago, but I love it SO much. It's my profile picture on Facbeook right now and I frequently find myself opening the photo just to look at it. I love it that much. It just so perfectly represents my little family right now. It reminds me to be grateful for what I have - and it fills my heart with happiness.

Playday with Cousins

Today we had a fun girl's day with Julie, Avery, Olivia, Wendy, Aubrey, Melissa, Amy (and Zachary) this week before Julie and the girls had to head back to Indiana. Lydia loves it when we get to play with her cousins because she always always always gets so much attention. Look at this happy girl: 

 

We met up at Wendy's house and played for a while, then ate some yummy pizza. We are glad that we were able to spend the time with family. Lydia is a lucky girl to have so many fun cousins. 

My Browser.

Random fact of the day?

I like to use the tabs in my internet browser. I like to be able to access lots of websites quickly, and if I see anything that I think might be worth reading/looking at - I always Right Click > Open in New Tab. If I really like it, I'll leave the tab up for a couple of days so that I can show David, or remember to tell Ashley, or so I can come back and read it more thoroughly when I have time. 

David always teases me for having so many tabs up. He is a 3 tabs max kinda guy. In fact, here is a screen shot of his browser (which, by the way is Firefox - whereas, I almost always use Chrome). ESPN, Email, and Mint. Perfectly describes him.

But using tabs? It's just the way my brain works. (Sometimes I feel like that is how I categorize my real life as well, lots of thoughts all neatly stacked across my brain that I can flip through at a moments notice.) Right now, I have 15 tabs open. If I were to go through and do a "tab cleanup", I could probably get it down to six. My two e-mails, Facebook, a "blogging basics" Pinterest page that I'm methodically going through, an article about being a mother that I really love, and this blogger page. Not so many, right? (Let's not talk about the entirely separate browser with 9 tabs all about large dry erase calendar boards - It doesn't really count because it's research for a purchase we are going to make.) 

However, the other day - I was opening all sorts of tabs as I was looking for something and when I finally looked up, I laughed out loud. 

I couldn't even see partial titles on my tabs anymore because I had opened so many of them. I showed David and he laughed out loud as well. 

In reality, it's not just tabs. My computer at the same time looked like this: 

 12 different windows open. I'm a busy girl.

While we are on this random subject of tabs, I thought that it would be fun to mention that I almost always have four tabs open. And always in the same order. All other tabs come and go. Sometimes they squeeze in between, sometimes they are added on to the end. But my four main tabs are: Facebook, my personal gmail account, my Red Ladder Design account, our The Peaden Life blog. Sometimes Pinterest is added to the end, but it's not an "always" tab. Other tabs that could be open on any given day: our coupon email account, blogger draft page, Red Ladder Design website, The Peaden Kitchen, random Pinterest pages/original link pages, news articles to read or to show to David.

What about you? Are you a tab-pro like me or more tab-averse? What are your favorite tabs to keep up? Do you have a specific order that they are always in? 

Friday Five

1- I'm finally all caught up on blogging our crazy life adventures. The only things left on my list is to blog about my pretty new (not-as-new-as-it-used-to-be-but-still-new) washer and dryer stand and to finish a blog about "things that I think" that I've been adding to off an on over the past month or so. I'm so relieved to be caught up with all of the things we've done and so ready to get back to my normal schedule of blogging.

2-Last night was HBM's Summer Party. Yummy food and playing at a park? Yes please. (There was also a bounce house that was too big for Lydia, and a balloon animal artist but the line was too long for David and I.) We really like HBM and had a great time at the party.

  

3-Because of the summer party, yesterday we went and dropped David off at the Frontrunner station so that we could just pick him up at his office and head straight to the party. (We hate having to come home in two cars.) This is different than the usual routine where we wave goodbye to Daddy from the kitchen/garage door while he gets in his car and drives away. When we got home from dropping him off, she looked around like "Hey, where is my dad? Why did you shut the door? Isn't my dad coming inside, too?" It's totally natural, because we never go anywhere with David that he doesn't also come home with us. I didn't even think about it until she started looking for him. I told her that Daddy went to work and that we would see him later - but she just stood by the door for a full five minutes, waiting for him to come in. It was so sweet. I gave her her cheerios and sippy of milk and she just sat down by the door for another 10 minutes. Seriously, a whole 15 minutes she just sat by the door. She didn't cry, it was just like "It's okay, I'll just stay right here and wait for my dad. He's coming soon." So sweet.

4- I know that I've mentioned this before, but Lydia climbs on EVERYTHING. She barely plays with her toys anymore - all she wants to do is stand on them or try to climb on whatever else she can find. Our chaise lounge is the perfect thing for her to climb on and she can start at the bottom and get all the way to the very top. (We now have pillows and a chair sitting on top of it so that she can't climb on it where we aren't there. Some of her other climbing adventures this week include climbing on and scooting off: the rocking chair in her bedroom, the small square ottomans (that she will stand and balance on if I let her... jeez, they are only 1 foot square!), her pink chair, a 7-gallon water container (see #5 below), the small couch in the family room, the window-blinds box in our bedroom, and even learning to climb up onto our large leather ottoman using some of her toys as stepping stools. Seriously, this girl is a climber! Heaven help me, because it is exhausting!  

5- This week Lehi City went into water supply crisis mode. The dry winter, hot summer, and large population influx combined to create a pretty serious water shortage. Earlier this week they were reporting that if there weren't massive changes in the populations water conservation efforts, homes would be running dry by this weekend. We aren't allowed to use our hoses/spigots outside, as those use culinary water. Odd numbered houses can only use irrigation water (sprinkler systems) on MWF, with even numbered houses only on TWTh.  Other conservation efforts are encouraged. Reports are now saying that things are starting to get under control - but for a while there it sounded like we weren't going to have any water this weekend. It made me so grateful for counsel of the prophets to have emergency food storage and supplies because I was able to go downstairs and get several large water containers and fill them up in our kitchen sink (they were empty because we still hadn't filled them up again since moving them in). You never know when you aren't going to have any water or other important supplies - and I'm so grateful that I am able to feel confident that we could last for at least a little while without running water.  It's kind of the same with everything - what if all the sudden you couldn't buy peanut butter, or sugar, or whatever else because of some state/national shortage. I don't think it's always a natural disaster that requires the use of food storage. My testimony of that has grown this week.

Happy Friday everyone!

Staycation 2013: Bowling (Part 4)

As you can see, we wanted to have as much fun on our little staycation as possible - and we were determined to utilize our pass of all passes as often as we could. One of the many activities covered by our passes was bowling. Both David and I love bowling, so we were excited to go and try it out. The bowling center was in Sandy and it was a little ghetto. Seriously, you walk in and there is this giant empty room with a little sign at the back with an arrow pointing you to the bowling lanes. The actual lanes weren't too bad - but they definitely weren't super classy. Our shoe rentals were $3.50 each (or something like that), which turned our "free bowling" into "not-so-free bowling." I think that next time we go bowling, we'll probably just go here in Lehi and use the gas money on paying for the games (and hope that the shoe rentals are a little bit less). Regardless, we had a great time! 

I bowled one of my best games ever - 163! Are you impressed? I am impressed.  

We took turns helping Lydia bowl and had a fun time together. By the end she was getting a little grumpy, but we all had a good time. 

Sidenote; I would love love love to someday own my own bowling shoes. Not that I want to be a professional bowler - but I just think the idea of owning my own bowling shoes would be so awesome. Something classic and traditional, while still being really pretty. It would be SO awesome. Someday. 

(Something like these, these, or these would be so fun!)