My Little Phelpers

I love to find fun ideas online.

I subscribe to so many different blogs and things through my google reader and email newsletters. As I read through my reader items and emails, I use www.delicious.com to bookmark and keep all the things that I like and want to look at again later. I found a way that I can put it on my blog and kind of like it. I made it a page, so if you are bored and want to see some of the things that I’ve been looking at and loving online lately just click on “link love” in the pages list on my blog (right now it’s in the top right hand corner, but that may change if I change my theme). Or you can visit my delicious page.

Looking through all my saved bookmarks though, I just wish that real life could be as cute as the world seems online.

Maybe someday I’ll get there.

Lately all my Sweet Baby James wants to do is sleep on his tummy on the floor or ottoman:

Snoozin'

And when he does sleep on his tummy, he looks like a little bug:

Baby Bug

Then sometimes, he doesn’t sleep on the floor or the ottoman:

The Dad Pillow

I’m glad he likes to sleep. He’s just so stinking cute when he’s asleep:

So Cute

Then again, he’s pretty cute when he’s awake too:

He's a little Lert

I very much love this room:

Mostly I love the blue ceiling and want to do it in my house… hmm. Which room to pick?

img from: apartment therapy

It was the summer after my freshman year at college: 2004. I had come home from BYU-Idaho for the summer and got a job at the Target in American Fork. Melanie’s friend, Kylee, also worked at Target and it was great to have someone to talk to that I knew. One day she told me about this boy that worked on the sales floor (I was a cashier) and that he was super cute and that I should go on a date with him.

His name was Bryan.

I hadn’t worked there for very long, so I didn’t know who she was talking about. I told her I would keep my eye out for him and think about it. A little while later, while I was working another Target employee came through my lane. He was buying toys and food for a dog.  We got chatting about his dog, Phoebe. How long he had her, what kind of dog she was and I looked up from the register and noticed his name tag. It was the Bryan that Kylee had told me about. She was right; he was cute.

After that initial meeting, nothing happened.  We closed together a few times and we chatted when we saw each other. During one closing night I remember putting away abandons with him and his two friends, Brett and Shaun in A and B, standing by the greeting card aisle. They were shooting elastic headbands at me. Now that I think about it, I don’t think that Bryan shot any at me, or Brett, it may have just been Shaun.

Another night we closed together I was talking with him in between toys and the seasonal section of Target. As I walked away Janeen, one of our fellow Target employees, came up to me and asked me what I thought of Bryan. I was putting on chap stick and told her that I didn’t know. I had never thought about it.  She told me that she thought that he and I should go on a date. We would make a cute couple, she said.

(It’s funny the things you remember.)

Janeen happened to also be one of the team leaders over the cashiers. So when I worked, I had to do what she asked. One evening, the store was super slow so we were all just kind of standing around talking.  I was talking with Janeen and Bryan came up again. She really thought we should go on a date and she was determined to make sure it happened.  She disappeared for a little while coming back with a bow from the gift wrapping section. It didn’t have a tag and needed one.  She told me that I needed to go over to the aisle and find Bryan and have him get me a number so we could make a tag for it.

I found Bryan and he got me a number for the bow and asked if I wanted to go and get some ice cream at Sonic after work. And we had our first date, one summer evening at Sonic in American Fork.

Now, six years later, we celebrate our four year wedding anniversary. It’s amazing how something as small as a white gift wrapping bow without a tag can change your life forever (with a little help from Janeen, Kylee and a few of our other Target friends…).

The story doesn’t end there, the next two years before we actually got married is full of all kinds of drama and intrigue… but I’ll save that for another day.

Bryan: I love you more today than I ever thought possible.  Thanks for marrying me.

Because having a new baby, just wasn’t enough change in our lives, Bryan and I also decided to buy a new house, pack and move out of our townhome.

(yes, we’re slightly crazy)

So the day before Mother’s day and just two short weeks after James’ happy arrival, we packed up the moving truck and away we went. Our families both pitched in  and we had so many wonderful helpers!  Thank you so much to everyone for coming and helping.  We appreciate all your help so much.

During the move I was running around like a crazy person.  I wanted to take some pictures of everything going on, but never did. Oh well. My soon-to-be-sister-in-law Aubrey did get some pictures of our front door and James during all the excitement. She posted them on her blog, you can check it out: Musings of Mo. (the first two pictures are of our new front door, then James and then pictures of our cute niece, Maddy).

After we got everything out of the truck and into the house, my mom, aunt Deanna and cousins Emily and Jared helped out a ton by unpacking and organizing our kitchen for me.  It was such a wonderful blessing! The kitchen is one of those rooms that overwhelms me and having that finished before the day was done was wonderful. So you can have a peak at that room (it’s not an awesome picture, it was just taken with the camera on my computer. As a side note, although we do have an office that my computer can live in, I decided to put it on the desk in the kitchen and am totally LOVING having it right in the middle of everything.  I can work on my computer but still be in the heart of the home.)

The Kitchen

There are so many things that I am loving about our new house.  Here’s a list:

• I love that I can do the dishes without having to have Bryan close the dishwasher for me
• I love that none of the walls are shared. (The Cardons were wonderful wall-sharers in our townhome, I almost never heard them at all, but I always felt like I was too loud and they could hear me and I felt bad. Now, I can turn the music up as loud as I want and never have to worry.)
• I love that everything is on one level. I don’t have to hike up the stairs. Laundry gets put away right away because I don’t have to fold it in the family room, then carry it all up the stairs. It’s just seamless.
• I love that Teddy likes the house and can still see out the windows.
• I love that we have been here for just over a week and it already feels like home. It’s like we’ve always lived here.

We’ve put away and organized all the rooms except the office and the baby’s room (he’s sleeping in our room right now). So as soon as those two rooms are finished, I’ll take some more pictures and let you see the rest of the house. For now, you’ll just have to enjoy this little taste.

Now, don’t think everything is perfect. (Although it’s pretty close) The back porch of our house doesn’t have steps going down and there’s no yard… so taking Teddy potty is kind of a pain.  We have to hook him up to his leash, out the garage and then out the side yard and stand there with him while he does his business. It’s a good thing that I have diaper changing to bargain with though. I say to Bryan, “I’ll change James’ diaper if you take Teddy out…” and it almost always works.

I do kind of miss our townhome though.  Mostly though, the people. That was the hardest thing for me about moving, realizing that I was going to have to leave a ward that I have grown to love so much. You are some of the greatest people I have ever met.  The first time Bryan and I set foot in that ward building and became members of the Vineyard 2nd ward, we were instantly greeted with warmth and friendliness. Attending a new ward for the first time has always been kind of a super stressful for me (traumatic experience when I was younger, I’ll share the story sometime), but because of how wonderful the people were in the Vineyard 2nd ward it wasn’t so hard (it was harder for me to tell them that we were leaving).

To all of you wonderful people in the Vineyard 2nd ward: thank you so much for your friendship and for the things that you have taught me over the last two years. I will never forget the wonderful friends and examples you have been to me. I will miss you so much.

Let’s still be blogging friends, okay?