Painting & Life

The other day, through a pretty roundabout way - I heard about someone who was talking about me and my blog. The way that they were speaking wasn't in a very positive way - and it was apparent that they had totally misinterpreted what I had written. I like to think that I am a positive person. I'm fairly flexible when obstacles crop up and always try to look for the good. I live a happy life and always try my best to share that happiness with others. 

I think that sometimes people interpret that happiness as being fake or unrealistic and so I try to temper things (like our blog) with "real life" as well as all of the happy things that are going on. But sometimes I forget that it's hard for people to read a blog and interpret correctly the attitude or voice behind the words. I hate the thought that people would read my blog and think that I was a negative person who complains about too many things. Not that I really care what people think of me, but I hate the thought that my children would someday read the things that I've written and not believe 100% that I loved my life and the joy that they brought to me. I want to be known as a good, kind, loving person who loved her life with all that she had - even through the tough times. I want to be known as the kind of person who may not have been perfect, but certainly tried her very hardest to love and serve those around her. I want my children to know that I loved them every minute of every day - even on the days when we were all tired and a little bit grumpy. I want them to know that I loved God and trusted in his timing, even when things weren't happening in the exact way that I wanted them to happen. I want to live my life so that if people were to say negative things about me - no one would believe them. Obviously, I'm not there yet... but I hope that someday I will be.

It's hard to balance the good and the not-so-good when trying to give an accurate picture of our life. I look back at our blog through the time when I was having an extremely emotional and painful miscarriage and I didn't say a word. It was too personal, and so I didn't share. Part of me wishes that I would have said something. Other times on our blog, I have shared some tough things that we are going through. Life can be hard - but I don't want to post all of the frustrating aspects of life for fear that they will overshadow all the good in my life. Frustrating things happen, but that doesn't mean that life isn't good. 

Because, our life is so good. 

I am grateful every day for the life that I have with my handsome husband and our sweet Lydia Elise. 

I'm grateful for our home, our jobs, our family, our religion. 

I'm grateful to know that the Lord has a plan, and even when the tempest is raging, I have the hope and faith that our Lord has the strength to help us overcome and calm the waves and comfort us in our sorrow.

I'm grateful for a blog where I can write out my thoughts, share our family memories, and keep in touch with family and friends. 

I have many things to be grateful for. And, with that being said - I hope that anyone who reads this blog (whether it be a friend now, or a child later) knows that the person who writes this blog is a happy and loving person, who is trying every day to be a happier and more loving person. I'm not going to try to hide away the un-polished aspects of our lives, but I'm also not going to be afraid to post about the beautiful and happy things that make up this thing called life. 

And, in the spirit of sharing what our life really looks like: 

This is Lydia's first experience with painting. She loved it. She tried to eat the paint a million times, and preferred to stick her fingers in the paint and play in the water with the paintbrush, but you could tell that she was having a good time. The event didn't last very long, maybe five or ten minutes, but it was fun and we both enjoyed it. 

About halfway through we switched our rinse cup from a glass one to a plastic one (she kept trying to knock it off her tray). She wouldn't stop eating the paint, and so I took the paint tray off her high chair and when I turned back around she was drinking the paint water. (After which I frantically found the paper that had come with the paint tray to make sure that it really was non-toxic.) 

And that is real life here. Some fun with paint - some drinking of the paint water.

That is just the way our happy life rolls. 

The Little River

Last week we had a fun little play day with Ashley, Carson, and Elsie. We went to the little river splash pad in Highland and we loved it! Lydia loved climbing up and down the edge of the river, and through the fence at the end. She didn't love the water that sprayed out of the fountains, but she did love wading through. It was nice to get out into the sun and cool off in the water. I loved wading up and down the river while our kids splashed around. 

My favorite picture is in this series below. Lydia patting Elsie's hair and Elsie playing with Lydia's bow. I hope that these girls grow up to be best friends.  

  
Just looking back through these pictures makes me grateful that we live in such a nice place, and makes me grateful that we have such good friends. We are trying to enjoy every last minute of summer! 

Five Things

1. After grocery shopping this week, our fruit drawer looked like this. Lydia and I are in heaven. There were such good sales on fruit that I may have gotten a little carried away. A golden honeydew, two plums, a mango, two kiwis, two apples, two peaches,  plus a cucumber, two red peppers, and an avocado. Not pictured: a bunch of bananas and a zucchini. We are happy girls this week.

2. Visitors! Our good friends Brad and Eve Tuft moved to Iowa several years ago and were kind enough to take a few minutes to stop by and visit us while they were in Utah. Brad was David's best friend for many years at Utah State and was actually in the same institute class where David and I met. I'm always grateful that David had such good friends in college, and Brad and Eve were among the best of those. It was nice to be able to catch up and meet their little boy. Here we all are: Brad, Braden, Eve, Emma, Me, Lydia, and David.

The next night we were able to have Melissa and Blake up for dinner. We ate some delicious California club pizza and chatted for a while. It was fun for us and Lydia LOVES them. She couldn't get enough of Melissa. 

3. We are working hard to get our yard all put together. We've spent a good deal of time at Glover Nursery and we think that we have all of our plants picked out that we want in our flowerbeds. I even made an amazing photoshop rendition of what our house will look like with all of the plants that we want, but I can't find it! I think that it must have gotten deleted or something. I'm really bummed. I'll leave you with this picture of a columnar oak tree. I found this in a Walmart parking lot and thought that if possible - it would be a beautiful tree for our front yard. I took a picture and pulled off a leaf and we took it to the nursery. I mentioned it and showed the leaf to the guy that was helping us - who immediately knew exactly what it was. I was very impressed. Long story short - we are going to have one of these beauties growing in our yard very soon!

4. This was actually last week - but we went to story time at the library with the Coopers and had a great time. They put on a puppet show and Lydia loved watching the animals pop out from behind the curtain. While the kids were singing songs - she decided to go off exploring. She is quite the little adventurer. We love playing with Carson and Elsie (and Ashley). 

5. After over a year of effort, our new Red Ladder Design website launched this week!  We are thrilled with the design and functionality of the website and hope to be able to start bringing in more business from online instead of our bridal fairs. This is just the first step in having an online presence that better reflects us and what we do. 

Along with our big website release - our Facebook page got a makeover as well.

We are thrilled with the way everything looks. We love our Red Ladder Design business and are glad that everything is progressing so nicely.

Happy Friday!