Getting Things Done!

The first couple of weeks of summer have already been fun and productive! We started off our vacation by celebrating the anniversary of our first date and seeing the solar eclipse. After that we fixed our dinning chair and Jonathan's bike.

We didn't notice that our chair was broken until after we got it, but it wasn't enough to bother Jonathan until the night of my birthday party. After everyone left, Jonathan took off the broken piece and laid down the chair. And it was laying there for almost a month before anything else happened (yeah, I wasn't too thrilled about that). Finally, Jonathan realized that something needed to be done with the chair. So, we started the project, but ran out of time before Jonathan needed to head off to school. All we had was the new piece of wood cut out, but no holes in it. After that, we decided to just wait until the semester was over before we tried to finish that project again. Jonathan got right to work on it and figured out where the holes needed to be and then drilled them! (Thank you Adam for having a drill press!) I loved watching Jonathan sawing and drilling. I hope we have more projects like this during the summer.

 Fixing Jonathan's bike proved to be more tricky. His bike had the unfortunate habit of losing one of it's peddles. That made it hard for Jonathan to get anywhere. Jonathan developed a plan to get it to work, though he needed a tool to make it work. Luckily, as we were walking around Lowe's, Jonathan saw a bunch of Dremels. They were on sale and just so happened to be perfect for this project! Jonathan was so excited to get one.

He quickly got to work and figured out the perfect way to keep to peddle on thanks to a suggestion from Dad.

After fixing it up, we rode all the way home. (Over 7 miles!) It worked beautifully!

This is just the first of many bike rides and projects for this summer!

My Kids

I absolutely love my nieces and nephews. They are all so unique, sweet, and funny. We've been spending quite a bit of time with them lately and I wanted to share a few stories and pictures.

Ryan is eight and a half (it still amazes me that he can be that old!) and loves playing games. On Memorial Day we played Rummikub together and it was so much fun! It's great that he's now old enough to play games that aren't just Candyland!

Tyler is a tank! He plays hard and sometimes gets hurt in the process. He loves speeding around on the scooter and sometimes crashes because of it, but he is a good sport and makes it back to the house on his own.

Tyler came flying down the stairs and suddenly started to tumble down. As soon as Amy scooped him up off of the stairs, he said "I didn't even scream!" He is so tough!

Kyle loves doing what his big brothers are doing, unless of course it means getting wet. He is our cat. During our big water war, Kyle was sprayed a few times and he cried. Other than that, he had a great time. He will be an amazing soccer player. That kid can kick the ball and then chase it down so well!

Garrett loves having his cousins around. He loves being in the middle of all of the action. When Ryan and Tyler were riding around on bikes and scooters, Garrett was chasing them down on his little tricycle. He doesn't push the peddles though, he instead pushes his feet off of the ground. It is one of the funniest things to watch!

Lyla is a sweet and chubby little girl. Everyone wants to hold her and she humors us so well. She is usually the quiet one watching all the madness going on around her. She is starting to get a little more chatty and smiley. We just love our Lyla girl! 

Mercedes is such a funny little girl. She refuses to wear pants and will only wear skirts or dresses. She is slowly starting to like Jonathan. Mercedes no longer screams when he comes near or sneaks out of a room when she realizes he's there. (Trust me, it's a big deal!)  She is growing up so much I just can't believe it!

Well, I can't give much of an update on Seth and Clara, but in 10 short days we will be in Idaho playing with them! We are both so excited to see them and their parents. I can tell you that Seth is one of the sweetest older brothers a girl could ever want. We have quite a few pictures of him holding Clara's hand. Clara is growing quickly like her older brother. It will be so wonderful to finally see them!

What's in a Name?

I like making lists of names. Some are names of family members and some are names that I like for my future children. I sometimes wonder what effect our names have on us.

I was named after my grandmother. I feel like I have a special connection to her even though I go by my initials. Since the name everyone calls me is only two letters, I feel like it sets my apart from others much like my various interests. I have become very comfortable with who I am even though I am different from most people.

This was the day my dad was sealed to his parents in the Los Angeles Temple.

Jonathan was named after Jonathan, the son of Saul and friend to David, in the Old Testament. He has many similar characteristics of him. He is kind and the best friend a person could ask for. He supports those he loves and tends to stay away from the spotlight.

A few weeks ago, Jonathan and I went to the temple and did sealings. This is the ordinance that binds families together forever so that death cannot separate us from our family. The people we did sealings for were from all over the world including Africa. A man who served in the temple in Africa shared that in Africa, people don't name their babies until they are 8 days old. If the baby dies before then, they take the bury the baby in the jungle and don't speak about them again.

When a family is prepared to go to the temple, they are asked if they had any other children, and if they do they are asked to name them. You see, it doesn't matter if the child was part of the family for only a few short days. They are still a loved child of God and they have the same privilege of enjoying the blessings of being part of an eternal family. These children that were once forgotten to the world are brought back to the remembrance of their family and receive such glorious blessings because of it.

I am so grateful for the wonderful blessings we receive at the temple and that they are accessible to everyone including our ancestors.

The Man I Love

There are many times when I wonder how Jonathan has been able to survive. He is often in his own world and is rather forgetful. This is a prime example.

That is his breakfast bowl on the trunk of his car. He made it all the way through our apartment complex with about nine speed bumps. Yes NINE! Boy, is he lucky!

Photo Wall!

I blogged about this project in early March and now it is finally come together! I got a pack of 6 large frames at Target and bought a few more little ones and then I was ready!

My mom helped me figure out the layout for the wall.

It was so exciting to see the wall fill up with pictures!

There was a small problem with the light switch being in the way (yeah, that was my fault), but luckily my mom helped me figure out a different lay out.

Disaster averted!

I added a few more little pictures of our nieces and nephews.

Almost done!

All of the frames are now up and it looks so good!

The quote on the wall says "The most important things in life are not things." That quote was really the inspiration for this project. I wanted to have a visual reminder of what life is all about. I have a picture of Jesus Christ in the center because when life is centered on him, everything else falls into place. I am grateful for that knowledge and hope that this will help me remember that.

A Cause For Celebration!

Jonathan and I are done with another semester! To celebrate we decided to get prime spots for the solar eclipse in Durham, just outside of Chico. The last solar eclipse that we saw happened in 1992 and I didn't really care that it was happening. Thankfully, this time I was so much older and knew what was happening!

On our way to see the eclipse!

Our first look at what was happening.

I figured that we had some time before the eclipse totally happened, so I did some exploring around where we parked. It was just some fields with overgrown oak trees and clusters of California poppies. I ended up taking a ton of pictures. Here are just a few.

 With the picture on the right, I used our binoculars as a zoom lens.

Once it started getting closer to 6, we started checking the eclipse a lot more frequently.

This was right before the full eclipse!!!

I took a couple of videos of the moon completely blocking the sun, but I'm not entirely sure how to post them. Oh, well! Before we left, we noticed that the light coming through the trees was also crescent shaped.

This was such a neat experience to see an eclipse! We already are making plans for the next one that passes over the United States in 2017. (Yeah, we're nerds and we know it!) I'm so grateful to have a husband that likes the same things that I do!

On our way back home, we found Fred from the movie Cars. Apparently he's been in Northern California this whole time!

Fred's the rusty car on the right.

This was the first of our many adventures this summer!

Mother's Day Weekend!

We had a wonderful, family filled Mother's Day weekend. It started on Saturday with a Patterson family barbecue. Most of the family was there and it was great! There was tons of noise with the cousins playing and even more cuddling with baby Lyla.

My mom always has music playing at her house and she made a special playlist for the kids with music from some of their favorite movies. One of the songs is Boogie Fever (from Despicable Me) and Ryan was sure that they were singing Booty Fever instead! He and Tyler started shacking their booties all around the kitchen. They are a silly pair of boys!

This is all that was left of our dinner.

Ryan was dying to play baseball, but it was way too hot to play during the afternoon so he made flyers so no one could forget to play after the sun was off of the street. I still want to know what the "other stuf" is...

After dinner, these three goofballs were going crazy! Tyler was riding on the tricycle while Kyle and Garrett chased him. Yes, there was lots of happy screaming by all three boys. And yes, I think we all lost some of our hearing from their shrill screams. (They may be boys, but they scream like girls!)

Lyla just hanging out during the game.

For my mom's gift, we all chipped in and bought her a brand new, iPad! Before she opened it, Andy and I set it up and got her some apps and put some family pictures on it. She was so surprised! 

Here are some of the pictures from the iPad.

Ryan sang us a song he learned at school. It should sound familiar...

After going to church on Sunday, we went to my parent's house and had a quiet lunch before visiting Grandma Machen. While we were there, we ran into my mom's sister, Andrea! Our quick visit turned into an hour long chat with her. It was so fun catching up with her and seeing Grandma. (Of course, I don't have any pictures of our visit.)

We then headed over to the Nelson's with flowers for Mom. We Skyped with Hannah for a little bit and then had a wonderful lesson given by Mom. The Nelson men made chocolate covered strawberries and raspberries for all of the girls. They were delicious!

It was such a fun weekend with our family! I love both of our wonderful mothers and our amazing sisters that are mothers. One day, I'll join their club!

Two Years Ago...

Two years ago, there was this guy that I knew who really liked me and wanted to date me. I liked him just fine, but I wasn't sure if I wanted anything more than just a friend. Luckily for that guy, I was researching for a lesson and I read that girls need to go out with a guy once before they should decline any more dates. I knew that sooner or later I would get a phone call from him and sure enough, it came on May 18th. I was never around my phone at that time and so this guy left a message saying he had a question for me (his mom taught him to never ever ask a girl out on a message). Now that really puzzled me and so I called him back. No answer. I didn't really care and went on with my evening. He called back around 8:30pm. He just wanted to see if I wanted some ice cream. I agreed to go with him and quickly got ready to go. He picked me up and we went to Big Spoon. It was a rather chilly evening so we sat near the fire pit. We ended up talking for 2 or 3 hours. He then took me home and gave me an awkward one-armed hug and left. I didn't realize at the time that I was going to marry that man in less than one year.

I love the story of how we ended up together. I think it's really funny. Anyways, I decided that we needed to do something special for the anniversary of our first date. So, we planned on going out on our first date all over again! (I completely forgot that we did this exact same thing last year. Sorry honey!)

It started out with an awkward message on my phone and then we planned on going out a 9.

We had way too much fun pretending that it was really our first date. We did the usual chitchat and had a hard time not holding hands. We sat around the fire pit and did a little more pretending, but then it was just too much.

Lounging as we enjoyed our frozen yogurt.

I am so blessed to have such a wonderful husband that takes such good care of me. I love all of our silliness and the time that we get to spend together.

Instagram

I have quickly become one of the biggest fans of Instagram. Thank you for finally developing the app for Android! It's yet another way for me to take and share pictures of my favorite people. Jonathan's not the biggest fan especially since it basically looks like you've taken pictures with an old camera. I, however, enjoy the look and feel that it gives the pictures.

My brother took a couple of these pictures. He uses Instagram too!

Be prepared for more Instagram pictures...