For the youth

Some BYU students have a club called USGA (Understanding Same Gender Attraction) and they have created some videos to help the youth of the church who feel depressed about their life because they are gay. I know how important it is to find these youth and help them know that they are loved and they can have a great life. I hope all the youth of the church will see this because even if they are not gay themselves, odds are they have friends who are that they can help. The first video is a compilation of interviews and here is a link to my sister's interview. (which I couldn't get to load for some reason)

Mudroom

Check it out, my husband has skiiiills.

Before - notice the hallway with the plain wire coat rack. We would just throw our shoes in a pile and I hated having coats on hangers out in the open, it seemed so tacky.

 

And here's the After - much more useful, Calvin can even hang up his own coat now...  he just needs to remember that

Last chance...

It's been about a month, so this is your last chance reminder if you want me to illustrate your book, send it in! Thank you to those who have submitted, they've been fun to read. The official deadline is March 11th at midnight.

Backseat driver

The other day I was at a stoplight and the driver in front of me wasn't paying attention so I gave a quick honk to let him know the light was green. It must have really thrown off Calvin, this was our conversation:
Cal: What was that?!
me: I was just honking at the car in front of us so they knew the light was green
Cal: Why??
me: The other driver wasn't paying attention
Cal: Well, you could've rolled down your window to tell him.
I could tell he was concerned I was being mean by honking and I tried to let him know that it was a polite honk. Honking can be polite, right? Calvin doesn't think so.

High Fashion

Calvin is pretty known for his strong opinions on how he dresses. There are so many examples. He loves shorts sooo much. Last year when it got cold he would wear his shorts on top of his pants. This winter he caved when I told him he had to start wearing pants but will only wear one pair of jeans and he wears them over and over until I have to confiscate them for washing. He refuses to wear long sleeve shirts. Only short sleeves or sleeveless shirts are acceptable. And they have to be "cool", only he knows which ones are cool or not.

His boots. It's the first thing he puts on as soon as he wakes up from his nap. He would LOVE to wear them with shorts. They are getting too small, but still wants to wear them at all times. He insists that his jeans don't cover his boots. He is always stopping to tuck the front cuff of his jeans back into his boots. We've been trying to mandate more normal-shoe wearing and I guess it is a lot more difficult to tuck jeans into the front of shoes than it is in boots. Solution:

Fortunately, they don't stay tucked in very long and he hasn't put forth too much effort into tucking them back in.

Knicks fan?

This was a first: Calvin was eating breakfast in the kitchen and espn was on the TV. I noticed 4 clips on Jeremy Lin coming up so I left it there while I ate breakfast. Calvin asked, "Mom, why are you watching basketball??" I guess you could say I caught Lin-gitis

Story by you

I'm always trying to spend more time doing illustrations. I have a goal of illustrating a children's book every year, even if it is just something I have written, or a friend has written. If anyone has something they want to submit, I'd love to see what ideas my friends/family have. I'll pick one to illustrate and try sending it to some publishers. In case you want to send me something but don't have anything written right now, I'll wait for a month or so before choosing. Email me at: theillustrator at gmail dot com. You don't need to separate it into pages, just send the text all together.

Here are some hints of what type of books I typically prefer: short, rhyming is always fun, silly
ie: sandra boynton, mo willems

Also, my website is currently being updated but you are welcome to visit my facebook page. It wouldn't hurt if I had more fans :)

kitchen project

We've been painting our kitchen & cabinets the past couple of weeks and here are the results:
(we didn't really take "before" pictures, but these are from when we moved in, so... it's "before")

We have a mudroom in progress. This coat rack area was covered with piles of shoes & it looked like a tacky closet without a door on it. stay tuned....

 Also, while we're doing before & after, here is Calvin:

Brandon's Twin

This is not a picture of Brandon. Crazy, I know. It's a picture that a friend's brother saw in a clothes catalog and thought, whoa, that looks like Brandon. That's right, Brandon's twin is a model. I hope that's what my twin is as well. And now we know what Brandon's back up career should be.

Farming neighbors

 I'm working on a painting with animals in it and decided I wanted to take my own scrap. (in case scrap isn't a common term I'm going to clarify that it just means a photo or something to reference, having a chicken run around my kitchen while I draw would be awesome, but photos seem to be more convenient - and less expensive - than live models)

Since I've been biking by beautiful farms near my neighborhood a lot during the summer I kind of feel like they are almost my friends and I decided they wouldn't mind letting me take pictures of their animals.

 It turns out I was right. I went to a couple houses and got to take pictures of alpaca, sheep, chickens, turkeys and I guess the owner didn't want the dogs to feel left out, so I took pictures of them too:

 Can you tell the sheep are a little scared of me?

Two little feet

Shelby is at a fun age of learning. Currently she is getting really good at standing. Yep, standing. When was the last time you looked at someone and said, wow, they are really good at standing? Maybe never, but it's so cute because it's a new skill for her and once she starts walking, I'll probably forget how cute it is that she can stand too.

New clothes and a nose

Calvin & Shelby just got some really cute new clothes from Brandon's aunt & uncle. Here's Calvin about to leave for church:

 I'm not sure what this pose was about...

Then about 3.4 minutes after that picture was taken Calvin tripped on a cord, face planted into the side of the couch, and got blood on both of us. So here he is in his getting-too-small corduroys and a sweater instead. (at least his new shirt survived) And although my picture is not featured here, I have on a new outfit on as well. Yes, we were late to church. And Calvin had kleenex sticking out of his nose for most of sacrament meeting,

 

Triathlon victory

Here's a recap:

 

We got up super early, it was still dark when we got to Yuba Lake and windy too. It made me second guess my decision to come without a wetsuit. Luckily, by the time the race started it was nice and sunny and the water was plenty warm so all I had to think about was not getting kicked in the face too much. I was relieved when I found some space without anyone whacking me until I realized it was because I was WAY far away from where I should be. Swimming straight is tricky.

It was cool when they wrote numbers on my arms and legs to make me feel like I was really a triathlete. They wrote which race you were doing on one leg and your age on another. I accidentally told them the wrong age. hey, I just had a birthday, kind of.

Calvin loved the "trophy" they gave me (it was really a medal) and keeps telling me how great it was that I won and how tired I was. Yes, he is an observant boy, I was very tried.

 And there's a bunch of people I need to thank for helping me: Paul helped me be a better runner, Kerri taught me how to be a road biker (and Stefanie helped too), Vanessa let me use her sweet road bike even though I've never met her, Heather helped me practice open water swimming and Brandon was so supportive and did so much extra work at home while I spent lots and lots of time training. Here's my cheerleaders waiting patiently for me:

movin'

From these first few pictures you might think, hey, it looks like Shelby is crawling. Then you see her actually doing this:

 

Whatever it is, it's exhausting:

Food & Wine

We were sent a few free copies of Food & Wine magazine. This is why I don't think we're going to get into it too much: it had a recipe for how to make your own tofu which included a key step of making your own soy milk. This is what Brandon thinks of tofu: "I would only eat it if I was on Dual Survivor (his latest make-it-in-the-wild-TV-show)"

Biking

I went on a nice long bike ride last night and loved cruising by gorgeous farming fields and country animals. Here are some of the thoughts that went through my head:

It would be cool to have some sheep.

That house is huge.

I think I'll really like biking when I get good at it.

gag. I wonder how many calories were in that bug?

Is that bug going to be in Shelby's milk? I hope that's not bad for her.

Why don't they make bike helmets with face shields?

Maybe I should ride with my mouth closed more.

bird house

Our neighbor gave us a bird feeder that I am loving. I watch the birds fly to and from it all day long. Brandon had never bought bird seed before and accidentally bought a giant bag of some gourmet stuff. We've sure had a lot of cool birds at our house though, so maybe gourmet seed is the way to go.

Rockin' out

Calvin wears his "rockin' out" boots whenever he can. I don't know how they got the name, but he has pointed them out to many strangers. Usually he either randomly tells strangers, "I'm a big boy!" or "I have my rockin out boots" and does some sort of kick or side step to show them off.
Here he is performing for Shelby:

Brandon has tried to explain to Calvin that they are actually snow boots and that once we start wearing sandals he can't wear them anymore. I don't know if I will be the one enforcing that though since on my mission I had a competition with one of my companions to see who could wear their snow boots further into spring. And mine looked like this and I wore them with dresses.

Nutella

 

 After lunch Calvin requested a spoon with some nutella on it. I agreed and told him to put the spoon in the sink when he was done and then I went upstairs with Shelby. Next thing I know he comes up stairs like this. And the spoon I found in the sink was not a baby spoon, but a giant serving spoon. But he did put it in the sink, just like I asked.

Sweat Fest 2011

Anyone remember Sweat Fest 2009? It was pretty awesome. We had 25 people compete and we lost 185 pounds. The winner won $125.

So I had another baby, how about round two? Same rules:

1. Monday April 11th - Wednesday May11th. Whoever loses the largest percentage of weight wins.
2. Entry fee is $5, winner take all. Email me (theillustrator at gmail dot com) to let me know you're in and I'll send you my address. The money must be received by April 11th to participate.
3. Email me your current weight on April 11th and your final weight on May 11th. And since you have to tell me your weight, I will tell you mine. (and then you are sworn to secrecy)
4. I won't share your info, just how many people enter, and who wins with their weight loss percentage.

May the person who sweats the most win!