Apple tasting and mess making

One of the things that I love about fall are all the apples! Yesterday some friends and I made delicious caramel apples. I personally had never made caramel apples before, although I have certainly been guilty of eating them. We had a blast! We had all kinds of goodies to stick on them, and we turned our otherwise healthy snacks into sugar-coated confectionary masterpieces.



Stirring the pot and melting the caramel.

Jessica enjoying the finished product.
Taysia is about ready to bite into her caramel apple. YUM!!

Then, this morning as I was loading the dishwasher, Jake was in the kitchen with me and found an almost empty Life cereal box sitting next to the trash can. I say "almost" empty since there were no more whole cereal pieces left, so it was for all intents and purposes ready to be thrown out. But you know the crumbs that are left at the bottom? Yes, Jake found those. He emptied out the plastic from the box and dumped out all the crumbs everywhere then continued to have a wonderful time trying to eat them and spreading them all over the kitchen floor.

You can't tell from this picture, but he actually has crumbs all over the his face and pajamas. This was quite a mess to try to clean up, but Jake was sure enjoying himself! Gotta love the kid. :)

What a day...

Today was one of those days. Nothing terrible happened, but from the moment I got out of bed it was like I had transformed into "oscar the grouch" overnight. I don't know what it was exactly...maybe it was the fact that it was FREEZING when I woke up this morning. I had to turn on the heat in our apartment for the first time, which of course means $$ that we don't have being sucked out of our wallets. Or maybe it was that Jake seemed extra whiny today. He didn't seem to be satisfied with anything. I was about ready to throw him out the window by the day's end (not really, please don't call CPS). Or maybe it was just that it happened to be Monday (which I don't really think was the case since I don't particularly loathe Mondays like some people...I think Monday gets a bad rap sometimes). Anyway, it was just an ugly, gloomy day outside and for some reason it rubbed off on my mood.

When Joseph got home from school we were supposed to go clean the church with some other couples in our ward at 6:30. I was dreading this for two reasons: 1) Let's not beat around the bush, cleaning is not exactly my favorite thing to do, especially when I'm not in a good mood to begin with, and 2) Jake goes to sleep at 6:00, which meant that he was going to be up WAY past his bedtime when he was already driving me crazy. I was just going to suck it up and do it anyway, but when Joseph came home and saw how much Jake just needed to go to sleep, he suggested that I stay home with him and he would go without us. Needless to say, it didn't take much convincing on my part to take him up on his offer.

After Joseph had left and I put Jake to bed, I decided that I needed to unwind a little bit, so I got out my scrapbooking stuff and worked on Jake's baby blessing page. As I worked on his page, I remembered that special day and I could feel my grouchiness disappear as gratitude for the many blessings in my life took its place. I felt grateful for our little family, plus our amazing extended family. I felt grateful that Jake is a happy and healthy little boy and that he has an incredible father to look up to as an example of how to live his life as he grows up. I felt grateful for a husband who understands when I need to take time for myself and willingly lets me do so. Most of all I'm grateful for the gospel in my life that keeps my family together.

Isn't it amazing how all it takes for grouchiness to disappear is to count your blessings?

Maybe I will have a job afterall!

So here's the story...I was at Salvation Army the other day just perusing the merchandise to see if there happened to be anything that I didn't know that I needed but just HAD to have. I know from previous experience that Target will donate the items that don't sell in their stores or that may have bad packaging to Salvation Army or Goodwill and then they sell them there at a fraction of the cost. Thus, many of the items are brand new but for some reason or another were donated to goodwill. So I'm walking along and I saw a brand new, still in the box Graco Safeseat infant carseat. I also know from previous experience (we bought one ourselves for full price) that they retail for well over $100. Salvation Army was selling theirs for $45. I checked it out, it still had all the tags on it, brand new, everything was there except for the packaging plastic that comes in an unopened box. I had flash of inspiration. I decided to buy the carseat then sell it on Craigslist.com for a profit. I researched everything online (it turns out this particular carseat actually retails for $129.99) so I decided to put it up for $75. Two days later the carseat was sold, and I made $30!! This guy was getting a steal for a brand new carseat at $75 and I still made a profit. So it got me thinking...maybe I can do this every once in a while...look for good deals and then sell on ebay or craigslist for a profit. Maybe I'll have a job afterall! I'll be an ebay powerseller! :)

My new hobby

I love to scrapbook!! I just started getting into it a couple of weeks ago and it's my new favorite thing...besides this blog of course. I think I go to Jo-ann Fabrics or Hobby Lobby at least three times a week to just look at all the fun scrapbooking things that they have there. Jake is a good sport about it. As long as he has something to chew on he's my little scrapbook shopping helper. I'm really just starting, but I have already been a little impressed with myself, and it's been awesome to get my "creative juices" flowing. Joseph is also quite impressed with my work...he told me the other day that he would have never thought that I would take something like this up. What does that mean? I'm just so domestic now... :) Here are a couple pictures of my first ever scrapbooking pages. We still don't have our camera yet, so again, they're not the best quality, but they're just a little sample of how I've been spending some of my free time lately.

Those are Jake's real footprints...he used to be so little!

I've done a couple of wedding pages

And some pages of when Joseph and I were dating...

There's no place like home

We're back in the land of endless cornfields! Jake and I took the train (without any glitches this time, thank goodness) back home to Iowa yesterday. As wonderful and memory filled as our vacation was, there is just no place like home, and Iowa City has come to be home for us over the past couple of months. Our vacation to Michigan was so much fun and filled with wonderful visits to friends and family, and most importantly we got to meet the newest addition to the Dunford family, "little" Isaac John Dunford. Jake just thought he was so cool! We loved seeing my family, plus our extended Jones family and celebrating Isaac's blessing.

This is the way that I talked to Joseph for almost two weeks - through a webcam on the computer. After talking to Joseph on the webcam for so long it was so good to finally be with my husband in person.

Aunt Eliza with little Jake. We loved seeing you!!

Apple Picking

Yesterday our family had a blast at Leaman's Apple Orchard. It is a family tradition of ours to go apple picking that started way back when we still lived in Missouri, and we thought it would be fun to introduce Jake to the joys of picking your very own delicious Michigan apples! Of course he didn't exactly pick them himself, but he did eat them himself! We got to enjoy a hay ride, maze, scavenger hunt, cider and doughnuts, and of course picking the apples. What a fun time!!

This is our family on the hay ride. Trenton brought two of his friends along, and Jonathan is holding his new little baby Isaac. He is such a doll!

Jake and my sister Bethany at one of the cute face hole things (is there actually a name for those?) at Leaman's Apple Orchard. Jake loved being with Bethany, and I think that she was more excited to be with him than with me...isn't that how it always is now though!? :)

Jake loves apples!!

Happy Birthday little bro!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TRENTON!! My youngest brother Trenton turned 17 years old yesterday (can you believe it!?). I got him a bunch of balloons and treats and took them to his school so he could get a pass to get out of class to get them in the office. I thought I was being so thoughtful because I always liked an excuse to get out of class and I figured he would too. However, he didn't leave class to get his balloons, in fact, he forgot that he even got a pass at all and forgot to pick up the balloons! Don't worry, I made him feel really guilty about it. I always like to make people feel guilty on their birthdays. :) Jk of course... For dinner my mom made a wonderful concoction that Trenton suggested...thai chicken pizza. It was SO GOOD! Then we topped it off with a yummy peppermint patty chocolate birthday cake. Good choice, Trenton. I can't believe that the little baby that my sister and I used to sit down in between us and see who he would crawl to first is all grown up. I am so lucky to have such an awesome brother. He's a great kid and just a ton of fun to be around. Love you bro!

Jake is crawling!

After about a month and a half of Jake getting up on his hands and knees and rocking back and forth, he finally figured out how to put one arm in front of the other to actually get somewhere! This means that I'm going to have to go home and start baby-proofing our house because I have a feeling that Jake is going to be buldozing his way through our little apartment in no time. His favorite thing to crawl to is his pacifier, and Grandma and Grandpa are proud of the fact that he started crawling while he was here at their house. Way to go, Jake, you finally did it!!

Planes, trains, and automobiles

Ok, subtract the "planes" part of the title on this blog, and you have my ENTIRE day. My parents were going through some serious Jake withdrawls, so we thought a nice trip up to Michigan for a week and a half would give them just the fix that they needed. We had no idea that our little trip would turn into such a crazy day.

First of all, our train was 2 hours late coming into the station. By the time we got into Chicago where we were supposed to make our connecting train to Ann Arbor it was 3 hours late. My connecting train left five minutes before we got into the station, and no, they would not hold the train for us. That left Jake and me stranded in Chicago. There were about 25 of us that missed the connecting train, so they decided to put us on a bus instead to ship us up there...wouldn't you know, the bus had exactly 25 seats, and 26 passengers were supposed to get on the bus. Do the math...Jake had to sit on my lap.

What a nightmare! Somehow a 3 hour trip turned into a 6 hour trip, and Jake was awake for literally almost the whole time. For the most part he was a happy baby being passed around the bus from stranger to stranger who wanted to play with him. Usually I'm not too fond of strangers touching my baby, but in this situation I was too tired to care. Luckily, he only screamed for a few minutes. However, the only way that I was able to get him to stop screaming was to nurse him... Sparing the details, let me just tell you that it was one of the more embarrassing moments of my life.

Finally we got into Ann Arbor at about 1:30 am. Our day started out at 9:00 am and ended almost 17 hours later, and yet somehow we managed to have a great adventure in spite of it all. Now we're here in beautiful, beautiful Michigan where we plan on having an awesome vacation and visit with the Michigan grandparents.

P.S. I have a video of the bus ride...when I figure out how to post it I'll provide the footage.