Paint.

I hate white walls. No, I take that back I don't hate them, I just don't like them in my own home. I've wanted to paint the inside of the house since the day we moved in. I got Athen's room done a long time ago. But have gone back and forth on what color to paint the downstairs. On Monday something hit me, I went out and bought some paint and started painting. It was awful! The color was called carmel, you think it would be kinda brown right? Nope, orange. YUCK! So Tuesday I went and got a different color, Almond Oil, again thought it was going to be more of a taupe. Nope, totally clashes with my carpet. Why is finding the right paint color so hard, why can't it look just like the sample once it covers your whole wall? Even though I have Almond Oil on half of my living room walls, I'm back to the drawing board trying to find the right color. You want to help? Stop on by! I'd love your opinion.

Last Thursday we packed our suitcases and headed out for an adventure. What was it you ask? Tackling a week of three kids. To most of you this is your everyday thing, but we are new parents who can barely keep up with our 'Busy B'. Tim's sister and husband took off for a trip to the Netherlands, so being the kind, wonderful, sweet, charity filled people we are Ü, Tim and I offered to drive to Portland to take care of their 2 girls. Grace who is 4 yrs. old and Jane who is 2 yrs. old have been my favorites from the day I met them. We had a fun filled week going to the Portland Zoo, the library, to visit Grandma & Grandpa Harris, playing princesses, making cookies, going to Out of This World Pizza, coloring, dancing to the piano, watching secret agent Oso, and picking out girl outfits and doing their hair. The girls are angels and with Tim's taking complete care of Athen and me the girls, things went as smooth as butter.

I'd love to share pictures of all our adventures, but for some reason we could not remember to put a memory card in our camera (go figure) so after day one we have only a few pictures to share, but many to paint in our minds.

Grace and I made these beautiful daisy sugar cookies which I would have loved to have tasted, but held back after she made the comment "Aunt Haley's fat". Thanks Grace Ü.

One of Grace's and Jane's favorite activities is coloring. Lets just say I could win any coloring contest I had so much practice.

Aunt Haley loves you Gracie Lou and Janie!

Picture Perfect.

Picture Perfect family and individual portraits. A friend of mine is coming to the tri-cities on May 5th to do a photo shoot. He took our family pictures in February and we had a lot of compliments on them. So I'm spreading the word if your interested in some great family portraits he has room in his schedule and you should check out his blog here and his website here. If your interest contact him here, he'd be more than happy to hear from you.

Great Deal.

This was my great garage sale find today. This super cute chalk board is from Pottery Barn Kids. I love their stuff but way out of my budget. So I was HAPPY to find this sweet deal! It even has the set up for a roll of paper for drawing. I love garage sale season!

We are alive...

We are still here! We have been very busy in the last 2 weeks, entertaining company, doing chores, and playing in the sun!

My Tuesday went as planned. 8:00 Dentist, 11:30 Police BBQ, 2:00 Visiting Teaching, 3:00 Activity Day, 5:00 walking. Lets just say I didn't sit down and breath until 6:00.

Athen is loving being outside. The moment a door opens he dashes to get out before we can stop him. However, he hasn't figured out how to step out of the house and not fall on his face and obtain a rug burn from our door mat.

Tim is in the final stretch of his training, this week is his evaluation phase and if everthing goes well he will be let loose the first of May! We can't wait for the stress of training to be lifted from our shoulders.

I love when General Conference...

allows me time to do this....

Chocolate Covered Pretzels...yummy!

Planting flowers...

Athen was my big helper Monday morning as we headed outside into the cold wind to plant flowers in our very plain sad yard.