Apparently I have been on vacation! Sure hasnt felt like it. We have had quite a busy past several months, with the birth of Zoee topping the list. So here is a quick rundown of our lives since July.
August:
Andy celebrated his first year of being a single job worker, and a year for Eyemasters.
We celebrated with close family and friends then impending arrival of Zoee.
September:
Elli started back to preschool with Miss Jenny, and is of course loving it!
Zoee Sarai was born on the 14th, early morning, at home while her big sister and brother slept!
October:
Our baby girl turned 4!
Zoee attended his first wedding for Taylor and Quinn
November:
Cousin Jill and Justin's wedding
(must have been a slow month, cant remember much else exciting from then!)
December:
Andy turned a quarter of a century old
Zeke turned 2! with a SUPER windy birthday party at the park
Zoee attended her 1st Suns game, lower level seats even, something Elli and Zeke have yet to experience!
January:
Zoee finally met Godma when she came down for a weekend visit
Starting to look into schools about possibly enrolling Elli for kindergarten in the fall!
February:
Zoee attends her 2nd lower level Suns game, spoiled girl! I am almost 25 and have only been to 3, she wasnt even 5 months old by her 2nd one!
I think maybe that has been the big highlights? With my worthless memory it is quite possible that I am leaving out things, but who knows!
Monday, February 22, 2010
Well...
Monday, July 13, 2009
Some personal sewing...
After a very long, unintentional, break from sewing for Elli, I have caught the creativity "bug" again this week. I have made her 3 dresses in the past few days, and am hoping to get a couple more made as well as matching ones for Zoee. Who knows though. My creative energy may run out on me before I accomplish any more!
Crazy dancin' kiddos...
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
How to save a water submerged Blackberry.... at least how I saved mine :)
Zeke likes the phone, a lot. He is quite social, with himself that is. So last night when he grabbed my phone off the couch and went running I didn't think much of it. That is until I heard a very unusual SPLASH! Knowing that Andy and Elli were both in the living room, and the only one moving around was Zeke I knew it was caused by him. Knowing that the last thing he had grabbed was my Blackberry I jumped up freaking out. Running into the kitchen I look into the sink to see my worst (electronic) fear coming to life. My precious phone was sunk to the bottom of the sink with raw chicken floating around it. What are the chances?!?!?! Our sink is filled with water maybe 3 times a month, of course Zeke chose the most inopportune moment to practice his tossing skills!!! Well here we are a few hours shy of 24 hours later and I am happy to report that the Blackberry is alive and kickin'. Here are the crucial steps that followed incase anybody finds themself in this situation.
1. Get it out of there IMMEDIATELY. The phone was submerged for maybe 5-10 seconds MAX. As long as it takes from me to run from my couch into the kitchen and retrieve. Who knows if time is of the essence, but my guess is the less time exposed the better.
2. Rip off the silicone cover, pull off the battery cover and rip out the battery.
3. Take a towel to these pieces quickly.
4. Hand phone off to husband to have him blow it out with the canned air. I would say he was blowing it for a good few minutes. (*** We learned this with the macbook when Elli decided to miss the table and dump a bottle of water on my keyboard. Andy picked the laptop up flipped it and blew it with canned air for several minutes. Never an issue, no damage. :) ***)
5. DO NOT DO THIS STEP!!! Andy tried to put the battery back in at this point, thankfully he didnt try to actually power it up. I think we may have lost the phone if he had. We at this point finally remember to pull the memory card and SIM card out. This should be done at the same time as pulling the battery. :)
6. I read online that sticking it in the freezer has helped others, so into the freezer it goes. It is in there probably a good 5 minutes before the next step.
7. I continue reading online to find that soaking it in raw rice has also helped. So now we dump rice into a casserole dish and submerge my phone, placing it back into the freezer.
8. Right before bed, so now 2-3 hours after it has been in the freezer covered in rice, I pull the dish from the freezer and set it on the counter adding the battery into the rice just in case.
9. Go to sleep praying that the phone will survive. After checking ebay and Craigslist I find that it is going to cost just as much as it did to buy it to replace it. Dreading having to earn $300+ I try to stay optimistic.
10. Wake up around 7 and retrieve the phone and battery from the rice. Stick them outside on a towel. Being in the lovely heat of an Arizona summer the phone will be able to sun bathe in 100+ degree temperatures.
11. 4:00 rolls around and I decide it is time to finally check on the phone. I really wanted to be patient and give it until after the sun was down later this evening. I do not have the patience for this. I am lucky I made it to 4. First I grab our trusty canned air and give the phone a good spray. Stick battery in and power up. Breathe a nice sigh of relief as you see the screen at least power up. Head upstairs to plug it in to the charger to see if this helps speed the process up. See your trusty homescreen reminding you that you are SIM card less. Power off, insert SIM card and memory card, replace battery, and power back up. Jump for joy as you hear all of your text/IM/email messages come in from the past day.
And that, my friends, is how we saved my Blackberry. I think some keys things that really helped our case was 1) the silicone cover, 2) our quick retrieval from the water and the use of canned air, and 3) the AZ heat. We DID not apply artifical heat at all, I read that this was not wise, and so we resisted the temptation for instant gratification. I hope if anyone ever finds themselves in a similar situation that they can have as great of a result as we did. :)
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
After 2 years and 4 months....
Elli has finally gotten another haircut! We have contemplated back and forth whether to cut it or not; I love her long hair, I think it is something of her "signature" right now. But it has gotten to a point where brushing it is a task, washing it is a battle, and keeping it looking neat and orderly on a daily basis is just impossible!
Elli's before...
Elli during, she did such an awesome job of sitting still, and the stylist took her time and was so great with her!
Elli after! She looks so grown up it makes me want to cry......
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Siblings, oh the joy...
These kiddos are just the sweetest (when they want to be!). Its nice to capture their moments of kindness to one another between all the mayhem that generally takes places!
And this boy and his faces.... he obviously was done being photographed!
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
So much CLEANING!
I decided to take this past weekend off from working, well on orders anyhow. I decided that we needed to do some serious purging and destashing of junk around our house. Now that we have the downstairs back in order (for the most part) life already feels a little bit less cluttered. The upstairs is another story! We have 3 big rubbermaid bins stuffed with toys, and are getting rid of a lot of the bigger toys that the kids choose to use as climbing tools rather than what they were intended for. Once those are gone (if anyone is interested in free toys let me know!) we will be well on our way to preparing for Zoee's arrival and living the more simple life of yesteryear.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
It's been forever, I know...
So things have been busy around here. Quite, busy. Elli is finished with preschool for the year- she had a blast! Zeke finally is growing and becoming quite a typical little man. We are over way done bakin' Zoee and I am trying to find time to declutter a bit before her arrival. Andy has moved to Superstition Springs mall, and with that had an hour change in work hours, so it is nice having him home by about 5:15 every day now, not to mention the savings on gas! I have been busy, busy, busy with orders. Finishing my two biggest ones to date these last couple of weeks. 32 pencil pouches for my Dad and 13 of my Smarty Arty art cases and 2 double sided pillowcases for someone. It was daunting but what a relief once it was done and shipped!
I am going to try my best to keep this up to date, at least until Zoee comes. And now for some pics...
Elli "graduating"
Water fun!
22 Weeks along...
Part of those two huge orders I mentioned...
