I love the idea of having a family tree in the home to always remember the wonderful heritage we come from. However, I don’t really like how family trees often look.
Then one day, I came across this cute shop: My Tree and Me and I fell in love. I loved their modern take on the family tree and wanted to do something like it (but not pay $120).
So I decided to make one of my own. Originally, I had thought that I was just stealing the idea straight from them (I saw the site, forgot to bookmark it, made one of my own, then found the site again), but it turned out that my idea was different that the specific trees they sell.
Here it is:
I love love love the way it turned out. I found a frame at Ikea that is 20×20 so I just need to get this printed and it will be a great addition to my living room. (I thought it was a little bit weird to post the first and last names of all my family on an open blog … I try to be safe about what I put up here … so I changed out the names for this post, but in the real tree it has all the first, middle and last names for James’ five generations.)
I toyed around with the idea of including more information like birth and death dates for each person (as applicable) but decided not to for right now. I just love how clean and simple it is. Maybe in the future I’ll expand it a little bit more, but for now I am very happy.
Now I just have to come up with another idea for baby #2. (who still doesn’t have a name. Guess we shouldn’t have used up all our grandpa names with james…)
Sometimes when I think about it, I can’t believe it has really been five years since this day:
Our Wedding Day
Five years seems like such a long time, but it still seems like it was just yesterday that we entered the temple together and made sacred covenants and changed our lives forever.
As I was reading through the Ensign this last week and with the thought in my mind that our anniversary was coming up, I reread Elder Richard G. Scott’s talk from the Sunday afternoon session of this last General Conference, The Eternal Blessings of Marriage. As I read the talk and thought about my own feelings about the blessing that marriage is in my life, I was touched with something he said.
I have no power to describe the peace and serenity that come from the assurance that as I continue to live worthily, I will be able to be with my beloved Jeanene and our children forever beacuse of that sacred ordinance performed with the proper priesthood authority in the house of the Lord.
I echo Elder Scott’s feelings and know that words can’t fully describe how wonderful it is to know that our family can be forever. I feel so thankful to know that I can be with Bryan for all eternity. As we sit together on the couch and talk about the mundane things that happened during the day, I am filled with such a peace and wonder knowing that as we live worthy, these simple yet joyful moments never have to end.
I love Bryan more today than I ever have, and know that our love can continue to grow in the many many more years we will spend together.
The temple sealing has greater meaning as life unfolds. It will help you draw ever closer together and find greater joy and fulfillment.
This last weekend we ventured out and had some pictures taken to commemorate James’ one year birthday. We were so ready. We made sure that he had a nice long nap, ate a big lunch and had everything he needed to be happy through the whole photoshoot. We brought some toys and distractions to keep him smiling and busy while a stranger with a camera got up in his grill.
Everything was perfect. Then, just as the photographer was setting up the lighting and getting ready to take the first picture, James tripped and bit his lip.
It was tragic.
And his little sad face was so heartbreaking. But he started to give us little smiles.
Then he got a little confused and thought we wanted him to pose for a fashion magazine.
Then we pulled out some balls from our ball pit that we brought and he was in heaven.
In the end, I think we got some really cute pictures. My little guy is so handsome.
I can’t believe how big he looks and is getting. Time flies.
We went to the doctor this morning and found out that a beautiful baby BOY will be joining our family!
(Okay, the 3D image that they showed us did not quite look beautiful, it looked like my baby’s face will be made of oatmeal, but I know he’ll come out beautiful. (I’m not a fan of the 3D images… at least not this early in the pregnancy.))
We are excited. James is going to have a best friend to be with and help him make messes and pull everything out of every drawer in the house. They are going to be the best friends and I’m sure the worst enemies. Now we’ll have two tornadoes crashing through our house instead of just one. I’m sure they’re going to have so much fun together.
While we were in the ultrasound office the tech showed us a lot of different things that I don’t remember seeing with James, so it was pretty cool. She asked if we had any feelings about what gender the baby was and Bryan and I both kind of felt like it would be a girl (the lack of crazy morning sickness had me wondering if a different gender was brewing in my belly). So she stopped and had us look at the screen. “Well, can you tell what it is?” she asked.
I looked and there it was: a little boy.
After she showed us a few more pictures to make sure we were seeing what we thought we were seeing. James was going to have a little brother. Bryan pointed to the screen and told James to look and he looked up and clapped.
It was so cute. I guess he knew all along and is excited for his friend from heaven to come and join him. :)
It’s going to be a great adventure.
We will be going back around week 34 to get another ultrasound to check something on me that could have a possibility of complicating labor, but nothing to worry about.
I’m not a big scary movie person. I never have been.
When I was little my older brother and younger sister watched Gremlins and it scared me so much. I spent most of the movie behind the couch, hiding. I think since then, I’ve never really enjoyed scary movies.
I’ve seen a couple here and there, but things just hang in my mind for too long and without a doubt, if I see a scary movie, I’ll have nightmares about it. And it always seems that whenever I watch a scary movie, something frightening happens in my life to go along with it and make the whole situation worse.
Example:
In college, my friend Ashlie and I were invited to join my cousin Ashley and her friends for a movie night in Smith Park. When we got there, the sun had set and the park was dark. We sat on blankets and pillows and watched Poltergeist. Now, it would not have been my first choice of movie, but we were already there and stayed for the whole thing. After the movie, Ashlie and I went home and got ready for bed. As we were chatting, we flipped off the light and climbed into bed. Seconds later, the light turned back on…by itself. I don’t remember exactly what happened next, but I am sure it included screaming like babies and running from the room. That was probably just me though.
We discovered that there was a short in the light switch. As a makeshift solution until the apartment complex could fix it, we used tape to hold the switch all the way down so we could get some sleep. Although after the movie and our mysteriously turning on light, I don’t think that I slept very much.
That taught me to watch a scary movie in the park.
Another example didn’t happen to me, but I was an eye-witness.
My family was still living in Orem and my older brother decided he wanted to watch The Blair Witch Project. He spent the evening with his friends watching the movie. After it was over he came home and was telling my parents about how much the movie frightened him and how freaked out he was. I was sitting on their bed listening, but not paying too much attention because even him telling them about the movie scared me. After we were all done chatting, my parents told us to go down and go to bed. I followed Rob into the hall, but stopped to get something. He had already made it down the first flight of stairs and was getting ready to flip on the dining room light, so I stood at the top of the stairs and waited for the light. Just as he flipped the switch, the light bulbs flashed and burned out.
I have never seen my brother jump so high in his life.
And he squealed like a little girl. Thinking back about it, I still laugh.
So I think I’ll stick with comedies and romance for my movies of choice.
We had a wonderful Easter Weekend. While much of the weekend focused on James’ birthday, we still managed to squeeze in some Easter fun.
On Friday night, we were able to attend my dad’s concert for the Temple Square Choral. It was a beautiful concert. The songs and the order of the songs were reflective of our Savior’s last week on earth. A few of the songs were completely in Latin, but the Spirit was so strong. I am so happy that my dad is able to live his dream of singing with the Tabernacle Choir and sharing his Testimony through song. One thing that was extra cool, is even though we were pretty far away from the choir in the Tabernacle, we could still clearly hear my dad’s voice through all the other voices (probably just because we knew what we were listening for and we are so familiar with it (Bryan said he couldn’t hear it)).
On Saturday after James birthday party, we went over to my Grandma and Grandpa Walker’s for our annual Easter Party and Egg Hunt. It is always so much fun and there is always so much yummy food. This year we had sloppy joes, potato salad, watermelon, chips, dips and, of course, jelly bean jello salad (no jelly beans in the jello, just jello in the shape of jelly beans with whipped cream).
Much to my dismay, there was some spice in the sloppy joes that I had an allergic reaction to and I ended up needed to take some benedryl, so much of the evening is a little lost to me. But we did go out for a wonderful egg hunt and James was able to get in on the action.
Found it!
Got it!
Look Dad!
Because I was a little bit out of it, I didn’t get pictures of all the cute kids finding their eggs, just my own. But you can check out my aunt Kelly’s blog for more pictures. She’s more on top of it than me.
He only found two eggs before he was done with that game (and then we gave the eggs to someone else, he didn’t even get to enjoy the candy).
The Easter Bunny did join us Sunday morning. When I was little, the Easter Bunny always came on Saturday, and we celebrated with all the candy and things on Saturday, then Sunday the day was solely devoted to the Savior. I loved that. As a child and teenager, it helped me to recognize and remember that the holiday was about so much more than just the candy and pretty dresses. (It was actually later in my life that I realized that the Easter Bunny didn’t visit everyone on Saturday morning instead of Sunday.) Because of how it helped me to see the holiday, Bryan and I talked about it and that is how we decided we would like to continue to celebrate Easter with our kids. Because of the birthday party this year, it didn’t quite happen that way, but next year… the Easter Bunny will join us on the right day.
James did enjoy his Easter basket Sunday (okay, because of the benedryl trip I was on Saturday night, the Easter Bunny didn’t even visit us until after James nap… so it was about 2 pm by time we pulled out the chocolate).
What's this?
Neat!
There's something in here...
hmmm.
James did enjoy his first bunny peep. (The video is a little long. It took a little while for him to decide to open the egg with the peep inside, so even if you don’t watch it, just know that it was adorable. There isn’t much that James does that isn’t adorable to me though…)
It was such a wonderful day and such a wonderful weekend.
I love love love the way it turned out. I found a frame at Ikea that is 20×20 so I just need to get this printed and it will be a great addition to my living room. (I thought it was a little bit weird to post the first and last names of all my family on an open blog … I try to be safe about what I put up here … so I changed out the names for this post, but in the real tree it has all the first, middle and last names for James’ five generations.)
