"Baby in mama's belly"

This is a phrase we use a lot lately with Olive. Trying to ease her into the idea of a new little person being added to our family. She doesn't get it at all, but she will when there is a whole person taking me away from her throughout our days together. I have a Dr. appointment next Monday and I will have a better idea then of my due date. For now it is sometime the end of July. I am about 12 weeks along and starting to feel better, hence the new found effort to blog.

It is strange to think about sharing my love, time and patience with a whole new being on top of Olive. There are so many new emotions that you experience with the second pregnancy. It's definitely a good thing we have 9+ months to prepare.

Halloween is fun again!

This so called scary Halloween holiday has not interested me for some time. However, now that I have a child who can get excited about things like silly costumes and candy I am again a believer. Olive was a BEE this year. As expected I had so much fun thinking about making her costume far in advance but then actually doing it the day of trunk-or-treat. This was a digression from last year when I started sewing the night before. (Note: Our ward party was Friday so technically I was done with it 2 days before the real deal.)


Friday was a practice run. Olive not only was tired and a little grumpy but she looked it with the droopy antenna I made too long and flimsy. She kept staring at the yellow balls out of the corner of her eye wondering why she had to wear them.

Droopy antenna bee

Dad was a beekeeper I agreed to be one with him if he found them cheap but I backed out on the deal. He wasn't happy so I'll have to make it up to him next year.


Sunday she was even less excited to wear the "bee shirt", but once we forced her to put it on and got to Liams house she quickly learned the fringe benefits from her costume. She very softly said trick or treat at each door, answered "ya" when asked if she was in fact a Bee, and said many "tay toos" when given handfuls of candy per door. Generous as it is, what are people thinking giving a 2 year old handfuls of candy? :)






Notice the improved antennae design, but the Halloween bucket oversight (that was her Easter bucket).

Ollie the BEE and Charlie Chaplin

Let me just mention that Liam is Olives dearest little friend. They get so excited when they see each other and they both assume the other will be at any fun outing and are sad otherwise. They make words up together and...the evolution of her name from his little mouth is to die for. From Olvie and now Ollie. We love you Miam (Liam).

crate and barrel ends the spice war

Ever since Chas and I got married we have not been able to agree on a spice rack/spice drawer/spice jar/or any spice storage solution. We just knew that we needed some way to rid us of the spice chaos that existed in our cupboards. The problem came to a head as lately we've been getting into middle-eastern/Indian cooking and a recent trip to the local halal grocer doubled our spice inventory. So on top of the mish-mash of Costco and other bottle sizes, we had bags of seeds and powders floating around our kitchen (no skimpy bottles of spice for them, they sell spices by the pound!). After I shot down Chas' spinning spice rack again and a lengthy web research session, we came up with this cool solution: Buy stubby jars that fit inside our drawers and print our own labels. Behold...

this is our baby

We recently took some very belated 18 month pictures of Olive . Lately she has blossomed into this toddler that we are overjoyed with and always surprised by. The things she does mostly make us laugh but as I think about them now they water my eyes just a little. She needs to put the brakes on and remain a baby just a little longer. Here are the highlights of the shoot.