My Homemaking Attempt

I'm not sure if I've caught some kind of homemaking bug, but I'm suddenly finding myself wanting to sew and paint all sorts of things. My first project, with a lot of help from my mom, was designing and making a shower curtain. As a graduation present just over a year ago, my mom said she'd help me redecorate our bathroom, but we just ended up painting and put off getting the accessories until I could find something I really liked. Well, I absolutely love black and white and I just couldn't find the perfect black and white shower curtain. After a year of on and off again searching, I found a really simple one online that had small polka dots (which I also love) but it had a number of bad quality reviews. That's where the homemaking bug kicked in. Or maybe I'm just my father's daughter and think, "I don't need to buy that, I could totally make it!" (whether or not it's really true...) Anyway, long story short, after a couple of drafts and some inspiration from my favorite black and white polka dot dress, I designed this shower curtain. I picked out all the fabric and dimensions and my wonderful mom actually put it all together. Personally I'm in love with it. My favorite part is the fact that the red ribbon can be removed and replaced with a different color in the future if I ever want to change the bathroom. I'm thinking pale pink next...
I've also been trying to create some decorations to go with Logan's black, yellow and white bee themed crib set. I had these really tiny frames that seemed ridiculous to put pictures in, so I got creative and painted some bees to frame instead. They're nothing real special but I'm pretty proud of myself. I'll post pictures later of the completely finished project, but for now, here are my bees. :)
Lastly, I've decided I really want to sew Christmas stockings for our little family. I grew up with homemade stockings and this project is going to be one of our family Christmas presents. Eric and I spent two hours at JoAnns (much to his dismay) picking out all the fabric and we're super excited. I know Halloween isn't even here yet, but as slow as I am, it could take me till Christmas to finish making them!

All in all, I've caught this bug and I'm just hoping I get better at actually making the things I dream up! :)

Bring on the Fall! :)

Danger: Super long post in attempt to catch up. May lead to potential boredom. Sorry!

I'm so ready for fall! For all intents and purposes, summer is over but the heat just won't leave. I'm sure after a couple of weeks of snow I'll be looking back fondly at this heat and sunshine, but right now I just want to wear jackets and hoodies and take nice cool midday walks. Summer was a blast though. Logan returned to full health just in time for the Stoker Reunion and luckily we haven't had any other need for the nebulizer since. We had quite a drive both to and from the reunion with our cousins Brittany and Neal, lasting nearly 15 hours one way and including a screaming baby, a toll booth "evasion" ticket (in my grandma's car... :| ) and a terrible diaper blowout in the middle of nowhere. We survived though and it was worth it to spend the time with family.

A couple of weeks later we made it to the Channer Reunion down near Zions in Southern Utah. Eric couldn't take a whole week off school so Logan and I went down early with Eric's parents and Eric followed a few days later. It was a lot of fun, but I was really happy when Eric showed up. I don't know how people survive as single parents because it was rough being one for only a few days and I had Eric's family helping out! It was good though. We sang songs, listened to uncle Lane tell bear stories, played games, celebrated Adam's birthday, made crafts, shot off tennis ball cannons, etc. Sadly Logan had another first at the reunion: his first sunburn. We bought a hat and sunscreen for him, but I left them in the tent the first day because it was overcast. Stupid me. His poor little cheeks and nose got quite the burn but luckily he didn't act like it hurt too bad. I now have him wear his hat whenever we're going to spend much time outside and he looks super adorable in it. Here's a picture of him wearing it at the reunion while he sat in his Grandpa Channer's truck.

On the last full day Eric and I spent hours riding a four wheeler and hiking to a beautiful point on the mountain with Logan strapped to our backs in a baby backpack. The weather was beautiful and we saw quite a few deer and other wildlife. At the end of the reunion it was hard to say goodbye to Eric's family not knowing if it'd be a year before we saw them again. Luckily we'll see them in December because Mike recently got engaged and he'll be getting married on December 31st. The girl he's engaged to seems really great so we're super excited for him. :)

In an attempt to relax after the reunions, we took Logan to the Creamery on 9th for his first time. I love that place, but I felt so bad because Logan couldn't eat any solids yet and he was seriously eying our food.

A week or so later my mom brought Garrett to EFY at BYU and was a total life saver as she helped us finish moving out of our apartment (Thank you Brittany and Neal for helping us move out the big stuff!) and also cleaned. Moving is so hard with a baby but mom's make it so much easier! :) To let Eric focus on finals and finish his research paper for a professor, Logan and I went back to Washington with Mom and Garrett and Eric came up a week later. Another long car trip and one more massive diaper blowout in the middle of nowhere later, we made it to Washington. Here's Garrett holding Logan while we cleaned up...
We got to pretty much spend the month of August in Washington with my family and it was wonderful. I even got to play volleyball there once or twice! While in Washington, Logan started eating solids. We thought we'd be able to feed him solids at four months and even bought a high chair, but the pediatrician recommended we wait till six months, and boy was Logan ready by then. He started with rice cereal and veggies, and recently tried some fruit and he's doing so well. I thought I'd be chewed by his doctor for not feeding him MORE solids, but it looks like he's right on track. When he first ate solids, he managed to remain pretty clean actually, but not any more. Here's the difference between the first and second time.
We took Logan swimming for the first time at the Channer reunion, but he fell asleep pretty quick in a floaty tube so I'm not sure if it counts. We decided to try again in Washington at the same kiddie pool I played in as a little kid and he did a bit better. It was pretty funny actually because the pool's not real big and only a foot or so deep and people looked at us a little funny when Eric, my two youngest (but much bigger) brothers and I walked in to the pool with only one little kid. I don't think Logan really knew what to think of the cold water, but the other little kids at the pool were pretty excited to be around a baby. Afterwards we drove to a different park by the river to go swimming. I'm pretty terrible at swimming, and it'd been a really long time since I'd actually swam in the river, but Eric and my brothers pressured me into it and I ended up thoroughly enjoying it. It felt SO good and I discovered that there are actually tiny clams all over the floor of the river. I spent most of my life living near the Columbia River and I never even knew they were there. Here are some pictures of our outing. :)
During our month in Washington we also took a weekend trip to Portland, Oregon with our family and it was great. We stopped at the Bonneville fish hatchery on the way and looked at some massive sturgeon, salmon, and trout. Here's Grandpa Stoker looking at the trout with Logan.
While my Mom was in Utah I introduced her to her first Ikea store and consequently we had to take my dad and my brothers to one in Portland to share the love and show them how amazing they are. Here's Logan cuddling with Grandma Stoker and a soft blanket at the store.
We've now moved to Highland, Utah where we're living in the basement of my cousins Trevor and Tori's house. We've only been here for a few weeks but it's been such a blessing. With graduate tuition this year and diapers to buy, they've really helped us out and we're having a blast living with them. They've got four kids, ages 8, 6, nearly 2 and 10 months and it's Logan's chance to experience having older siblings for a while. He's going to have to get tough and learn to hold his own but he seems to really like the company.

Logan's getting to be a pretty big kid. At his doctor’s appointment yesterday, he was in the 92nd percentile for height and the 70th percentile for weight. He's also sitting up real well but hasn't started crawling yet. Now that he can roll over whenever he wants, he won't stay on his stomach and wants to be sitting or standing up instead. I hope he starts crawling soon so he can then work on walking, because snow will be that much more bearable if Logan can play in it.

Fall, please come soon! Besides the fabulous weather, fall brings the holiday seasons and we're super excited for them all. We actually listened to Christmas music the other night and we've already had Logan try on his Halloween costume. Does that make us a little anxious? ;)

Getting ready to pounce on his prey...

So there's 3+ months of our lives. I'll try to never have that long of a break between posts again, so hopefully you'll hear more about our Channer adventures soon!

Sick Baby :(

Logan hit another milestone, but not a happy one: he's sick for the first time ever. Eric caught a cold nearly three weeks back and at the time I was boasting to Eric about how amazing my immune system was because neither Logan or I seemed to be getting sick. Well, I spoke too soon. About two weeks later Eric was coming off the tail end of his cold and Logan and I caught it. Maybe it was my power of positive thinking, but I managed to walk away with only a sore throat, but Logan didn't. He started out with just a little bit of a cough, but now he's congested, coughing, barely eating anything, throwing up what he does eat, wheezing, etc. It's been pretty miserable for everyone involved. We took him in to the pediatrician the other day and we're now the proud owners of our very own nebulizer so we can give Logan asthma treatments for the next week. Yay. It's nice to know we have something to help him breathe better now, but it's a little scary to wonder whether or not he actually has asthma. There's a possibility because Eric had asthma as a child but outgrew it. I'm just praying Logan doesn't have it at all because I've been frightened enough these past few days worrying about whether or not he's breathing. Luckily, as of today he seems to be on the mend (crossing our fingers) and our smiley baby is coming back. This sickness can't end soon enough.

Some Random Happiness

Here's a short video of Logan rolling over at Brittany and Neal's house the day we ate pizza with them. Whether or not his last "rollover" counted, this time there were multiple witnesses and it's been reproduced. :)

A little bit of everything

Wow, brace yourself for a pretty random, scatterbrained post. :)

One goal Eric and I set for this summer was to try and go on a picnic every Friday for lunch since Eric doesn't have Friday classes and the weather is so nice. We've tried to explore different local parks each time and thus far my favorite is located by the Scera outdoor theater in Orem. It has a nice playground, lots of shade from beautiful old trees and it's kept up really well.
Watching all the little kids playing on the toys got me real excited for Logan to be big enough to at least go down the slide. As you can tell from the picture above, he has yet to grasp the excitement of going to the park. :)

Logan has definitely become more interactive and now loves putting everything in his mouth and standing up. He'll grab things like toys, blankets, clothing, etc. and try to eat them but he has yet to actually grab his binky and put that in his mouth. The day he learns to do that on his own will be a beautiful day indeed.
Look, he can even stand on his own!
Okay, he's actually leaning against the chair, but it looks pretty real to me. ;)

Last weekend we hung out with Brittany and Neal again and challenged them to a friendly game of bowling. Last time we did this Brittany and Neal royally kicked our trash, courtesy of my terrible score dragging our team total down. Miraculously this time we actually won!
Better yet though, Brittany and I both creamed the guys. That was certainly a highlight for me. :)
Here's Neal attempting to bowl Logan down the lane:
And Logan trying those fabulous bowling shoes on for size:
Afterwards we went back to Neal and Brittany's apartment to eat their amazing homemade pizza and watch Valkyrie, which was pretty sad and depressing. If only we could actually change history.

Lastly, we played our last intramural soccer game of the spring season this past Tuesday. Our team did pretty well, making it to the semi-final game in division one where sadly we lost, but still had fun and finished 4th. The crazy thing is that by our last game, I swear that nearly half of our team was either recovering from sickness (mainly the flu) or just coming down with it. Now that the season's over I hope everyone will have the chance to recover. Here's our team picture taken right after the game (so everyone would look amazing, of course! ;) GO WOMBATS!

The Game of Life

We recently had our cousins Brittany and Neal over for a fun evening of dinner and games. After a delicious meal of hamburger pie and biscuits, we busted out one of the few games that Eric and I actually own: The Game of Life. Before this occasion Eric and I had played the game a handful of times before, but generally with just the two of us (yeah, we're lame like that). It was a lot of fun, especially since there was a lot more "strategy" playing with four people and funny things kept happening. Like the fact that Brittany and I each hit almost every "It's a boy", "It's a girl" and "Twins" square on the board. Our little cars couldn't even hold all our kids but we tried valiantly to seat them all. Neal ended up with a lot of kids as well and somehow Eric didn't end up with any. The funniest thing is when we started the game, we joked that the point of the game/winning should be based on who has the most kids, not on who gets the most money (what a good moral this game has). Here's a picture of cars at the end of the game:
Another fun aspect that came up with more players was fighting/competing for the salary cards. We had both the highest salary ($100,000) and the lowest ($20,000) in play and they changed hands so many times it was ridiculous. We thought it was particularly funny that Eric who was the only one NOT to go to college kept rotating salaries between $90,000 and $100,000 while us poor college grads were getting our trashes kicked. And the fact that Brittany hadn't even graduated from college yet and she'd already won the Nobel Peace Prize. Yeah, she's good like that. :)
On another note, in our actual lives Logan just hit a milestone: he rolled over by himself! Okay, Eric doesn't actually think it counts because it happened while Logan was laying on our bed and he thinks indents helped him out, but I can't discredit Logan's achievement. He started on his back and slowly ended up on his stomach and that counts as rolling over in my book. Sadly his left arm was caught under his body and he couldn't pull it out so he decided to try and gnaw it off... ;) Here's Logan moments after the event:

A Month of Celebration

In the past couple of weeks, our family has celebrated a number of occasions. About two weeks ago we attended a surprise party for Adam who was preparing to leave to Shanghai, China for a law internship. It was a fun party and it was nice to see him before he left, but we more or less totally blew the surprise. We came late to the party and thought Adam was already there but he drove up while we were standing in the driveway. I felt terrible but luckily his girlfriend Chelsey who was hosting the party was able to smooth over our untimely appearance so he was still surprised by the large group of people inside.

A week later we helped my cousin Brittany pull off another surprise birthday party for her husband Neal who turned 24. We decorated their apartment, made a cake, provided an alibi for their return at a certain time, etc. Unfortunately, we kind of blew the surprise again; when Neal and Brittany pulled into their parking spot they noticed our jeep in the visitor parking. Neal was a little confused but just assumed that we had just beat them home to hang out with them. Luckily, he was still surprised by the other people there and we had a good time. We ate cake and buffalo wings, sang to Neal, played Guitar Hero, stayed up late talking, etc. Overall it went really well.

Here's a picture of Neal, the birthday boy with his chocolate cake and a picture of Eric, Andrew and Andrea playing Guitar Hero.
Just a few days later we celebrated Logan's 3-month-a-versary with a cake, candles and everything. Okay, I'll admit it, I was more or less just looking for an excuse to bake another cake because I had a lot of frosting left over from Neal's cake, but it was fun none the less. The cake was good, but really unnecessary health-wise.
I'll admit it, I have a baking problem. Less than a year into marriage Eric had to ban me from making cakes for a good six months or so. It's not so much that I crave cake (though I do like it), I just get really excited about some decorating idea I want to try out so I need a cake to decorate. It's a hobby I'm not super great at but I really like doing. The problem is I don't always have an occasion for the cakes so Eric and I end up with a full-size cake in our house and no one else to eat it. That's the biggest problem. Nothing spectacular, but here are some random cakes I've decorated.