Goodbye Old Friend

This week we said goodbye to an old friend: our 1992 Honda Accord LX. Aahh, the memories. (Tears welling up slightly). This is the car that Tony bought when he got home from his mission. This is the car we drove back and forth to Iowa probably 10 times. We have eaten, slept, and practically lived in this car. She has been all over the country with us from Chicago (I think that is as far east) to the California and Oregon coasts. We have never had any real problems with her, except when the distributor had a problem starting in Laramie, WY until we got her fixed in Iowa (That is around 700 miles!). This car has been a constant through our marriage and it seems strange to have her gone. I am not trying to sound overly sentimental, but I will miss her. I am not sure why I think of her as 'she'. Anyway, we sold the car to a nice family who needed a reliable and affordable vehicle. I hope that she will be good to them. She only has 159,000 miles, gets 27 mpg, and still has a lot of life left even though she is 17 years old.

FYI...she has been replaced with another Honda. This time we got a Civic to use on the long commute from the University to our house. I like the new car...I can hook up my ipod to the radio and I don't have to worry about it falling apart while I am driving. I am not sure if the new car is a 'she' or a 'he'.

Lawnmower

Have you ever heard a word said so many times that it starts to drive you a little crazy?  Well, for me (and Tony), that word is now Lawnmower.  Yes indeed.  Our little munchkin is OBSESSED with lawnmowers.  He asked to use the lawnmower for an hour straight this morning.  Of course we couldn't let him because we mowed the lawn on Thursday, it was pouring rain, and we were trying to get ready for church.  We have to say goodnight to the lawnmower.   If we are on a walk he will point out every lawnmower he sees.  His pretend lawnmower won't do anymore, it has to be the real thing.  Some kids like trains. Some kids like airplanes.  But our child, he likes lawnmowers.  

First trip to Lagoon

Last weekend we took Jacob to Lagoon for the first time.  I was a little worried about how he would react on the rides.  He is not afraid of anything, but you never know what a toddler (17 months) is going to do when you put them in an unfamiliar situation.  We were lucky enough to be able to go with the Boyacks (Tony's sister's family), Grandma and Grandpa Peterson, and Brett.  The first ride he went on was the "Jumping Dragon".  We thought this would be a good choice because we could ride it with him....this is probably not the best ride for small kids because it goes pretty fast, but Jacob absolutely loved it!  He had a kind of confused look on his face when we were riding, but when the ride was done he did the sign for MORE!  This happened with almost every ride he went on and he would throw a fit nearly every time we tried to take him off of a ride.  I would say he like the bumper cars the least mostly because he didn't know how to work the car and he tried to escape once his car got stuck on the side.  Brooklyn and Owen were so sweet with Jacob and went on rides with him and played with him when the adults were going on rides.   My favorite moment of the day is when Jacob went on the flying aces with Grandpa Peterson and made Grandpa sick because Jacob insisted on controlling the ride.  It was a really fun day.

Here are some pictures

Jacob riding Bulgy with Owen.  I can picture Owen telling Jacob that he needs to hold on tight.

Jacob on some airplanes with Brooklyn

Just cruising with Brooklyn in the cars.

Three cousins in a helicopter.

Jacob asking for help so he can shoot his gun on this ride.

Suggestions for Europe

As many of you know, Tony and I are taking our first Jacob-free vacation (thanks Grandma and Grandpa P.!) at the end of June.  We are going to Amsterdam!  Hooray!  Tony has a meeting for work there and then we have a few days to explore the rest of the Netherlands.  I am just wondering if anyone has traveled to that part of the world and if so, do you have any suggestions for things to do that are a little less touristy.  We are planning on seeing some of the standards like the Anne Frank museum, Van Gogh, and Rembrandt. We are also going to rent bikes and cycle around the city.   We are willing to travel to Denmark, Belgium, and Germany, but we don't want to spend our entire vacation on a train.  So if any of you out in bloggerville have some interesting suggestions we would really appreciate it.

Sewing Question

Recently I have been on a sewing kick.  I guess I was inspired by Tony's cousin, Shannon Y., who recently opened an Etsy shop (click here) full of cute dresses and skirts for the toddler/young kid crowd.  My sister Megann has also given me lots of great ideas for sewing the last few months.  Anyway, I feel that I have been pretty successful at making simple things like Tag blankets (see example here...these aren't mine though) and customized burp cloths (see example here) (I actually got this idea from Shannon V. who gave me some fabulous burp cloths when J was born).  So I guess my success had to run out sometime.  I decided to try to make this super cute skirt for my niece Marley in the hopes that it would turn out beautifully and that I could then move on to making a couple for my nieces Ava and Brooklyn (Lisa, don't tell them, I would like to surprise them).  

Once I had the skirt put together and was trying to feed the elastic through the waist casing, it was abundantly clear that it was not going to work out as I had hoped.  The biggest thing is that the circumference of the skirt was much too large for a 12-month old size skirt.  I couldn't get the elastic to make it around the skirt.  Yikes! 

So my questions for all you seamstresses are:

Did I make the circumference too big by not following the instructions correctly?

 I measured just like it said and cut on the fold...

Are the instructions just really bizarre?....almost 72 inches around for a toddlers skirt.

Anyway, I ended up chopping circumference of the skirt in half and making a less fabric-y (is that a word?) skirt.  In the end, I still think it is a super cute skirt, just not as twirly as I had hoped.  I will post some pictures later, but I am baffled by this skirt.

Here are the pictures as promised

Here is the final skirt after the removal of the excess fabric.

And...here is all the excess fabric.  Like I said, YIKES!

Paper saver

I recently found this really amazing website that helps you save paper when you are trying to print out information from a  website.  It is called Print What You Like (www.printwhatyoulike.com).  

It allows you to select only the text and/or pictures you would like to print from your favorite website and eliminate the advertisements and other junk.  As you can imagine, you can save tons of paper this way.  You don't have to download a program or do anything special.  You just go to printwhatyoulike.com and type in the website you are interested in.  Then it will navigate you to that page and a sidebar will show up in your browser.  You pick the parts of the webpage you are interested in and tada!  That's it.  It also allows you to save your new document in pdf or html format.  The website also has a short tutorial to help you get started.  I really like this program because it allows me to create pdf versions of my most recent posting on my blog without the sidebars or main photo.  I can then save them in my journal or use them in iphoto.  I know that you can make a book out of your blog with blurb, but for me this seems to be a better choice.

Successful surgery

First of all...for those of you who knew it was happening,  my surgery was successful!  And for those of you who didn't know...my surgery was successful!  I had an right arm ulnar nerve decompression and transposition on April 2.  The reason was because I had been having quite a bit of pain in my elbow, lower arm, and hand for the last few years.  Imagine feeling like you smacked your funny bone several times a day without ever even moving your arm.  Lately, it became quite unbearable and constant.  Along with the pain, my pinky and ring finger were almost constantly numb and it was driving me nuts!  Basically the Drs moved my ulnar nerve (funny bone nerve) from the back to the front of my elbow.  My younger brother, Andrew, had a similar surgery several years ago and my older brother, Josh, recently had the surgery, too.  I guess it runs in our family.  When Josh got his surgery it gave me the nerve (no pun intended) to finally take care of things.  So I had the surgery on April 2 at the U of U Orthopaedic center and other than a bit of recovery pain, things have been great.   It was difficult not picking up Jacob for a couple of weeks, but Tony was a great help and took care of him while I was recovering.  The best part is I can now feel my pinky and the pain is mostly gone!  

 Here are a couple of pictures of my newly acquired scar.  It is in a really good spot because no one can see it unless I awkwardly hold my arm over my head. My arm is still a little swollen and blotchy, but nothing too disgusting.

The Dr. said that if I hadn't had this surgery done, I would have eventually lost muscle function in my hand and would have had permanent damage.  Hooray for modern medicine!