7 Reasons Why I Heart Me

It's my BIRTHDAY present to ME!!! Emporer Kuzco

It's "The Final Countdown" to my birthday. Only six more days...

Reason #6 That I Love Me:

I love doing projects but I often fail miserably at them. Take Today's example for a spin. I had this great idea to scrap book a quote onto paper and put it on a canvas painted black to match my family room and it turned out terribly. The letters aren't straight, you can see the modegepodge lines, and the paper went on all bubbly. I think I have to leave it up for the sake of Devin because he wouldn't like me after spending a lot of money on the project to just give up. Why can't I have Melissa's meticulous painting skills, Emily's mad scrapbooking skills or Amanda's good think it through before you do it skills? I need some of their genes. Instead I just got frustrated last night and went to sleep at like 9:30. Devin stayed up and tried to keep smoothing it out.




In other news, my teal squares turned out quite fabulously. Mostly due to my friend Shaina's help.She's really good at making tape straight. (I'm excited my next week's project is her wedding sign in book. Hopefully it will turn out okay. Sometime I need to post pictures of the other wedding books I did.)




So today's next project is hanging up all the pictures. I wish Devin could help but he's doing a project for someone else. I think they call it service? Dang righteous husband. Helping his friends. Puh! I still want to do a canvas painted black with a one year anniversary picture of us on it but I can't do it until Amanda gets home. So until then, hanging pictures it goes.But before I show you the finished product here is one more project I ripped off from Recollections that turned out okay.



Maybe one of these days I'll think of my own projects. Until then I'll just hang pictures.







Tahdah!

I love projects!!!

7 Reasons Why I Heart Me

It's my BIRTHDAY present to ME!!! Emporer Kuzco

It's "The Final Countdown" to my birthday. Only seven more days...

Reason #7 That I Love Me:


Let us start at the very beginning of reasons that I love me. First, I was the hottest baby this blog has ever seen*. Can you get enough of a chubby baby with dark brown curls and blue eyes? (obviously not because Chloe is still the cutest thing this side of Sossaman) And wasn't my mom the best to make sure I was always done up in mini-world attire? I'm pretty sure she made sure all of her kids rocked it.




Apparently I had a hearty appetite (I say had like I don't now).


And I'm pretty sure my sisters are still jealous that I was the only one that didn't have to wear a shirt under my bikini that my parents brought us back from Hawaii. (Amanda is there now and I really hope she starts the same animosity by bringing home Eden and Delia bikini's.)



Anyways overall I was a pretty hot kid. Until I grew up.

Exibit A.


Devin calls it my Harry Potter phase. Woe is me.


*Please note I am only talking about my blog on which I have yet to post a picture of my future child or my sister's children so I am safe to say the hottest baby given that I am the only baby this blog has ever seen. I also apologize for the 17 asides that were probably unnecessary.

Drum roll please...

So now that you guys are so f-ing tired of looking at mother goose anytime you look at my blog I can post anything I want to and everyone will be like hurray she posted something new! I don't have to look at stupid mother goose and summer school crap anymore (by the way I got an A in the class, I rock). Anyways get excited because "The Final Countdown" is starting tomorrow.

You love life.

Summer School

So I'm taking Children's lit for summer school and the first day true to ASU form although I'm taking it at Scottsdale Community (yes I get to be an artichoke) we started with the nasty things. While you would think that a children's lit class would be nice and all about cute picture books we started by talking about books that have been censored such as mommy laid an egg and the Inner city mother goose rhymes.

Mommy Laid an Egg (I've included a picture of the cover for two reasons a.I am lame and have no good pictures to post and 2. for all you mom's who may not want their kids to pick it up) is the story of parents trying to explain to their kids how babies are born.

The parents offer a variety of suggestions of how the baby is born including that their mommy laid an egg. Well the kids don't believe the parents and so the kids decide they will educated their parents on how it is done. This includes stick figure drawings that the kids use to show the parents how to have sex. It's all stick figures but do 5 year old kids really need to know how to do it? Not to mention that there are drawings where the stick figures are doing it in multiple positions!

Anyways the next great read is The Inner City Mother Goose. It's poems include this dandy one...

Hickory Dickory Dock
The Crowd ran up the block.
A cop struck one,
A rock got thrown;
Hickory Dickory riot.

Okay so that one doesn't sound so bad but there is one about Jack be nimble, jack be quick Jack stab that knife in, make it stick. And yes I am probably over reacting but I think it's silly that these books are in the children's sections. Anyways yay for summer school classes and crazy teachers. And sorry my post is lame.

The Lecture

Just a short post about the awesome "lecture" I heard the other day while swimming.
Dad: If you want to be a champion swimmer you must swim harder, you must swim faster, you must swim better.
Girl (about 7): okay
Dad: You must get it into your head that you want to be a champion. Otherwise you will always lose. Do you want to lose?
Girl: No...
Dad: Then go home and write on a piece of paper how you will do better. And stop swimming like a loser.
Girl: okay

Poor Asian kids. All their parents want them to be amazing at everything they do.

* I realize this is a gross generalization and that I am only furthering the stereotype. Shame on me.

I really want to lose three pounds.

So I have given in to the gym.

I decided I am actually going to try and go. I went Saturday and this morning and now I am going tonight. Why you ask? Because this morning as I was dutifully trying to swim my new prescribed amount of a mile each day, old people were beating me and my self esteem couldn't take it. So I only swam 2/3rds of my mile and I'm going back tonight to finish. I'll have to tell you about "the lecture" that I heard later tonight. That's all for my blog update now. It's been like a week. Maybe I'll have pictures for you soon. My bro-in-law lee was so kind as to allow us to use one of his digital cameras so we don't have to rely on a camera phone for blog pictures. Oh and I started summer school today more about that to come.

By popular demand...

okay so this isn't by popular demand...actually only alisse asked me to post this but post I shall. Here is the program for my mom's memorial. enjoy!



This was actually a tri-fold. So imagine the front as the first three and the back as the last three. Oh and I take no credit for this. It was all my amazing sister amanda and her husband lee's doing.

AHHH

So we've been going through pictures and we found more of the pictures from our Florida make-a-wish trip. There were some fantastic pictures in them including this great one of Annie making the closest picture form version of her scared face. Sorry its a hard to see picture.


Anyways because I am a terrible older sister and a product of Reid Jones I love scaring Annie as does Julia. The best is when she is upstairs with her music ridiculously loud and you walk in on her when she's not expecting it. She doesn't scream just says like literally says AHHH really loud. It's kind of amazing but then she gets ticked at you so I try not to do it too often.

More Jones Amazingness you might appreciate. Here is a picture of Julia and I at Florida when I was skinny. Sad face.
Anyways...last night while making our mom's sign in book for Saturday I looked at these plastic dot embellishments and commented on how I wondered if they were good plastic to chew on. Julia aka my twin promptly replied...i already tried and they weren't that chewy...kind of too hard. We then died laughing at how similar we are. For those of you who have no clue what I am talking about the Jones family has odd oral fixations including but not limited to chewing on plastic. It is extreme and included Trevor taking off tags while shopping just so he can chew on the plastic that attaches the tags. The end.

mom and daniel

I'm sure you can all imagine the reunion going on right now and quite frankly I think my family feels left out! haha. but I just have to let you know some new things that have happened that I know my mom would be grateful for.

My mom was buried nine months to do the day ( even on a tuesday) that daniel passed away.
She was buried at the gloaming of the evening when he passed away.
At Emery cemetery there was a beautiful sunset and sky with pink and orange that she would have loved.
The weather was great! A little windy and nice and cool so no one was uncomfortable.
The sweet florist Amy Jones that helped us with the splay had the fabulous idea to get flowers and greenery from mom's backyard so it looked amazing and was a part of her.
The florist also helped us with one of my mom's wishes (i feel silly writing that) but anyway we didn't get to giver her a wreath of gardenias around her neck like she always wanted... but she did have a bouquet of gardenias in her wedding ring hand which was perfect .

Overall yesterday was very good and I know she was there with daniel and very pleased with it. Its just too bad she won't be able to speak saturday because we all know she would do a much better job!

brainstorming for saturday

Reasons I love my mom:

1. My mom loves and advocates for each of her kids as if they were her only child.
2. My mom has a strong testimony that she is a child of God and that Heavenly Father loved his children enough to restore his power on the earth in these latter days.
3. My mom taught me to love flowers and that I could never have enough "pretty". When I was little she would let me help plant the pony packs, take the hats of the California poppies, weed the flowers while patiently explaining that the flowers with the lacy leaves are larkspur not weeds and how to dig a hole.
4.My mom took us kids on camping trips all of the time to strawberry and everywhere else when we were kids and inadvertently taught us how to play with fire and how to be tough.
5. Every big decision I have made in my life seems to have been influenced by my mom. She'd tell me what she thought I should do and it would give me the courage to pursue my goal.
6. From about age zero, my mom took us to the library to check out books. She read to all of us kids all the time and fostered our love of reading.
7. Food = love. As Amanda says our chubby thighs are evidence of that.
8. My mom always and I mean ALWAYS woke up with us kids and made us breakfast each morning before school. We maybe ate cold cereal once every two weeks. The rest of the time it was french toast, waffles, eggs and hash browns you name it.
9. My mom loved to travel and wasn't selfish by just going with her and my dad we took to whole family. Whether it was a 7,000 mile trip in three weeks with 8 kids (three of them under 3) in a 7 passenger van visiting all of the church history sights, washington dc, new york and niagra falls or the other 30+ states she took us to. Instead of taking her trip to Europe she sent two of her daughters. How unselfish can you get?
10. Because of our extensive traveling our mom taught us to love culture and museums. She took us to see American Gothic, The Irisis, The girl with the watering can, just as a start. She also taught us to love classical music and old historical places.
11. My mom helped each of us learn a musical instrument. I think she probably spent of years worth of time taking me to cello lessons, Saturday group lessons, mys practice, concerts, recitals, and sitting with me while I practiced at age 6. And on top of that she taught each of us to play the piano. When she taught me she had me pay her five dollars a lesson which she would give me and then tell me to stand outside the front door and knock, then she would let me in, I would pay her the five dollars and she would put it in this red tin box that sat in the piano seat. Little did I know the money for my lessons went into a bank account that later paid for my first nice cello.
12.My mom taught us to love old black and white movies, period movies and foreign films with subtitles.
13. My mom taught me that saturday's were project days where we would paint a room or clean up the backyard or plant flowers.
14. My mom taught us to study the scriptures by helping us draw pictures in our book of mormons to help explain what was happening and by having us sit on sundays around her chair while she read stories from the ensign, new era and friend.
15. My mom used the time she spent with me in the car driving places to teach me valuable lessons and help make suggestions of what she thought I would be good at and what I should do with my life. Sometimes I thought she was lecturing the wrong kid and that I was just the target practice before the real lecture but it always helped me anyways.

Thats all for now.I'll have more later. My mom rocks.