"One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating."

Another two quoter day! This one wouldn't fit but I thought it was funny :)

"My therapist told me the way to achieve true inner peace is to finish what I start. So far today, I've finished two bags of M&Ms and a chocolate cake. I feel better already." --Dave Barry--

One fun thing about having Mark home was that I actually cooked! I cook while he’s gone but not as good of stuff, mainly cuz I’m lazy and hate cooking for one person! It’s just a pain and by the time dinner comes I just don’t to make the effort. So when Mark came I got my new cookbook out, Our Best Bites (which is AMAZING btw!!! It's by these two Mormon mommas who have a blog together and just came out with this book), and picked out some dinners and made ‘em!

One night I made this yummy rosemary pork tenderloin with rosemary potatoes and steamed broccoli. It was delicious! I love pork tenderloin and love trying new recipes on it. And I LOVE steamed broccoli (luckily Evelyn does too!) and this was delicious and so easy. Just a little olive oil, salt, and pepper and wa-la! Then with the potatoes I used fingerlings, which I’ve never used before, but they turned out great and super yummy. The sauce was a little more mustardy than I usually like for potatoes but they were good.

Another night I made lasagna from the same book. I asked Mark what he wanted me to make when he came home and he requested lasagna so he got it! This lasagna sauce was completely made from scratch and was pretty good! Mark loved it (and so did Grammy! I couldn't eat the rest of it after Mark left, there was half a pan left! so Grammy got leftovers from me :). I made some breadsticks (from the same book :) which turned out ok but I didn’t use the right ratio of seasoning on top so they woulda been better if I had. (I SWEAR I took a pic of the lasagna but can't find it...oh well :)

The third thing I made while Mark was here was pizza and pizza rolls. It used the same dough from the breadsticks (which is so simple and easy btw!) and this time it turned out amazing! I made their pizza sauce for it and also used it for the marinara to dip the pizza rolls in. The pizza was great but I think I liked the pizza rolls better. The garlic bread seasoning on top was SO YUMMY! They went pretty quick so next time I’m gonna have to make more of them. Unfortunately I forgot to take a pick of them so sorry about that. :)

I have made one other thing from this cookbook but not while Mark was here. It was their stuffed zucchini. Dad’s garden has started spouting out zucchini (big ones too which work perfect for this!) so I grabbed some and made this one night. It was SO DELICIOUS! I’m a big zucchini fan and absolutely loved this. I didn’t exactly follow the directions to the ‘t’ cuz I didn’t have everything but it was the basic gist of it and it was great. Dad and Mellisa tried some too and both like it as well.

So that’s all from that for now! I’m gonna try to be better at cooking for myself so I’ll try some more later and report! I think they have quite a few of the recipes in the book on their blog as well as great tips/tutorials/fun stuff so head on over and check them out! They are great!

The reason it hurts so much to separate is because our souls are connected. --Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook--

I actually found a lot of good quotes for this blog title, it was hard to choose! SO here's a couple more real quick :)

Missing someone gets easier every day because even though it's one day further from the last time you saw each other, it's one day closer to the next time you will. ~Author Unknown

You can kiss your family and friends good-bye and put miles between you, but at the same time you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, your stomach, because you do not just live in a world but a world lives in you. ~Frederick Buechner

Distance between two hearts is not an obstacle, rather a beautiful reminder of just how strong true love can be. ~Author Unknown

Anyway....

This past week and a half have flown by and I’m not too happy about how quick it went! As most of you know Mark came for his leave visit this past week and a half and it was so wonderful to have him home! Evelyn loved having her daddy here and LOVED all the attention and play time she got. I loved seeing them together again and quite enjoyed not being Evelyn’s jungle gym for once! I also enjoyed the break from changing diapers (Mark graciously accepted my request of him changing all the diapers while he was here, I think I only changed 1 or 2! Good man…. :) Anywho…it was a wonderful visit and I’m so glad he got to come.

Mark and I spent the first night in Kansas City (Evelyn spent the night with Grammy and Grandpa) and had a wonderful time. We ate dinner at the Cheesecake Factory, which was YUMMY!!! Then Saturday we did a little shopping and then went to see the last Harry Potter movie before heading home. Man that was a good movie!!! I loved it! I was balling (or trying not to, tears were streaming but inside I was balling like a baby). It was such a great book and they did really good with the movie. Anyway, it was a perfect little getaway for us as we spent the rest of Mark’s visit with Evelyn.

We got home Saturday afternoon and as much as I would like to say that Evelyn was ecstatic to see her daddy, it wasn’t quite the case. She had woken up from her nap just MINUTES before we drove up and she’s not a very happy person after waking up and that day was a bit more grouchy cuz she hadn’t seen her momma in 24 hours so it was a bit rocky. Mark went in first and she heard that door and came running, saw him, ran past him (crying all the while), and ran straight to me. Poor dear! I was taking a little video to capture it but stopped it right there. So no pics of that! And no video cuz this still won’t let me upload….ugh!!!! So yeah…we went home pretty much right after that and after she calmed down (and opened a present from Mark) she was just dandy and they played and played and had lots of fun. It was wonderful! I love seeing them together. They are so adorable. He misses her so much and gets so sad about missing out on her learning/doing new things! So it was nice to have him interact with her even for just a week and a half. She has been working on her colors lately and really picked a few up while he was here so he loved being a part of her learning something new. (She now knows pink and blue 99% of the time and red, purple, and yellow 80%...she picks things up so quick!)

She loves picking "flowers" for me :)

So we pretty much just hung out around home for Sunday and Monday, playing and enjoying each other’s company, and also getting ready for a little trip we took. We went to Nauvoo on Tuesday and stayed til Thursday. It was a quick trip but really great and I’m so glad we did it! We spent time with Monie and her fam and saw the new baby, sweet little Kellen! That baby is SO good and SO adorable! I’ve never seen such a chill baby…but I’ll get to him later. We did a little photo shoot of him so I’ll dedicate a whole post to that later. So yeah…on Wednesday we hung out with them and then went to a waterpark in Burlington which was pretty fun. Kady and Evelyn had a great time playing in the water and running around like little kids do.

(Dancing with Daddy at the hotel! SO adorable!)

That night we went to the Nauvoo Pageant, which was wonderful, although we were all so beat and tired and cranky we didn’t stay the whole thing. Evelyn would NOT stay still and kept running off and since it’s at night it was pretty hard to see where she went sometimes…I was kinda afraid to lose her! So we went home and went to bed instead. :) Thursday morning Mark and I dropped Evelyn off at Aunt Monie’s and went to the temple to do some temple work, which was so wonderful. It’s always wonderful to go the temple with your beloved but it’s even more wonderful to go back to Nauvoo where we were married and where we can reminisce and feel the wonderful spirit that is there. I absolutely love that place and love going back with Mark. I feel so grateful that we were able to go while he was home.

Daddy offered to share his hot dog with her...

And she grabbed it and ate the whole thing!

How can you resist that face though? :)

After we were done at the temple we picked up Evelyn, made some lunch, and headed off! We drove part way to Columbia where we did a little shopping (Mark needed some new running shoes for PT) and then went to my good friend Rori’s for a BBQ dinner with her, her hubby, and my other two good friends, Jeanie and Cheryl. It was great to see them all and enjoy some time with friends. I rarely get to see those girls anymore (darn growing up and getting married/jobs/etc.!) and it’s always wonderful to get together. We stayed for quite a while and then drove home (amidst and nice lightning storm chasing us) and spent the rest of Mark’s short visit spending every possible minute together.

Here's just a funny one from the pics we took :)

I had my best friend Sarah take some family pics of us while Mark was here, which went pretty good, except Evelyn, of course, wasn’t cooperating and kept running around and not paying attention to anything but what she wanted to do so we don’t have too many of us all looking at the camera but got some cute ones anyway! I’m just gonna have to get used to having lots of pictures of us up and walking or side shots or less formal shots. :) That girl is So active! Mark spent lots of time playing/chasing her outside and she loved having him at her beck and call to play with :)

So the rest of the visit was pretty calm, just spending time together, which was perfect. But Monday came all too soon and we were soon dropping him off and he was gone. :( It was very sad but we got through the first 4 ½ months and can get through these next four! Just gotta keep busy like before and it’ll be gone before we know it. I’ve still got a craft to-do list as long as my arm or longer (pinterest is getting SO addicting! So many cool things on there), so hopefully I can get some things done! Then in September we’ve got some traveling to do (hopefully it all works out) so that’ll go quick and then it’ll be October (Evelyn’s 2^nd b-day…holy cow!!!) and then November!

There you have it. I’m afraid this week won’t be too productive…it’s BLAZING hot (it was a high of like 108 yesterday! UGH!!!) and that always makes me more lazy/reluctant to do anything too productive…Evelyn gets cranky cuz she’s all cooped up inside and then bothers me when I’m doing projects so I don’t get as much done…vicious cycle :) I’m praying this excessive heat crap will go away!!! So yeah…I think that’s all for now! Evelyn’s asleep and I’m getting there so off to bed for me! Love to you all!

Evelyn and I went to Chipotle for lunch after we dropped Mark off at the airport...she was really into the burrito! She has good taste :)

The Kansas City Temple! This is a shot I got with my phone while driving by from the airport :) It's SO pretty!!!

"A little girl can be sweeter (and badder) oftener than anyone else in the world......

.....She can jitter around and stomp, and make funny noises that frazzle your nerves, yet just when you open your mouth she stands there demure with that special look in her eyes. A girl is innocence playing in the mud. Beauty standing on its head, and Motherhood dragging a doll by the foot." --Allan Back--
It’s been awhile since I’ve done one of these so here it is! Update on the wonderful Evelyn :) She is now 21 ½ months old, no clue how tall or how much she weighs although seems to be getting bigger but doesn’t seem to be much heavier according to Grammy’s scale…oh well. She’s healthy and that’s all that matters! I thought I would talk more about her little quirk’s and such this go around though.

First of all, this girl is still as talkative as ever…I saw that every time but it’s true! She’s such a good talker and pretty good at getting across what she wants (which is SO much better than having a crying baby that you don’t know what they want!) and boy does she know what she wants! Still as determined/stubborn/smart as ever too…dangerous combination right there :) When that girl gets something in her head that she wants she just does not let it go! Very decisive I guess which is much better than either Mark or I! We’re so indecisive about things…guess Evelyn is the COMPLETE opposite :)

Anyway, she knows so many words now and is getting better at little phrases and sentences. Awhile back she came up to me and asked, “What are you doing mommy?”, and I was like…whoa, what? She’s got such a good grasp of what things mean/when/how to use them. I know I’m probably gushing/bragging too much (or will soon enough in this post ;) but it’s my kid, I’m a proud Momma and I really am proud of her talking skills! :) So sorry if you get sick of it but this is a post all about Evelyn and I’m not gonna spend the whole time brag about her hissy fits right? :)

Back to Evelyn….so she’s got that new phrase down as well as a few more. Her newest is this…so when she wants something and doesn’t say please right away, I usually say, “what do you say?”, trying to get her to say please. But lately instead of saying please she says, “what do you say?” Oh boy….already talking back! :) Although she really isn’t talking back (or her tone doesn’t seem like she is….maybe she is, maybe she isn’t…who knows) but I think it’s pretty funny. ..for now anyway…

She’s also learning to ask why….why or why is she doing this is what I’m asking! :) I thought that was a later stage but I guess I was wrong or she’s doing it early. Don’t know where she picked it up either but I know I’m not excited about it! My favorite new thing she says is after I sneeze, she asks if I’m ok…”ok, mommy?” It’s pretty adorable and so sweet! I always ask her after she’s fallen or something if she’s ok so I guess that’s where she picked that one up.

Lately we’ve been working on our colors and she’s gotten pretty good at saying most of the colors…repeating them anyway. She hasn’t quite gotten down which is which. She seems to know blue pretty well but she also says blue for anything when you ask for what color something is. But like today, we got a balloon at Red Robin and I told her it was pink and after that she knew it was pink and didn’t forget. So we’re progressing there! :) She absolutely loves to color/draw/paint so I thought this was a good time as any to start on colors. I absolutely love this girl’s voice though…she has the cutest little voice and on certain words it’s just adorable ;) My favorites right now are when she says “color”, “diaper”, and “swiper” (as in Swiper the Fox from Dora…still loves that show although I’d love to see it go up in flames…I mean…Dora’s awesome! Hahaha….anyway, she says “Ah, man” every time she sees Swiper which is also very adorable.)

Along with talking she’s really been loving to make animal noises. She loves animals and right now her favorite seems to be a toss up between cows and elephants (courtesy of “Pooh’s Heffalump movie” which she loves). She loves looking for cows while we’re out driving (one of the few ways I can distract her sometimes…) and loves finding elephants around places. She does the sound pretty good too :) Also in her repertoire is a horse (although she says yee-haw or giddy up type stuff…courtesy of “Toy Story”), monkeys, dogs, and whales (another fav, courtesy of “Finding Nemo”….can you tell she likes movies….that’s courtesy of her Momma and Daddy, at least she’s learning lots of words and stuff from them! :) She’s still very observant so she picks up a lot of words and phrases from the stuff she watches and remembers really well).

Let’s see…here’s a couple other funny things about Evelyn…she likes to point with her thumb…don’t know why but I noticed this when we’re doing a Look and Find book. She calls Mellisa’s three kids “guys”. She sees them playing outside a lot and stands at the window calling, “Guys! Guys!” She only calls them that though. She’s starting to sing even more now and is, of course, super adorable when she does. She’s even starting to sing noticeable songs (aka usually the Dora opening song…ugh…it’s cute to hear her sing, doo doo doo doot Dora though!) when they aren’t on. She loves to hide and will sometimes disappear and become quiet as a mouse until I find her…not a big problem here in our little shack but kinda scares me sometimes when we’re at Grammy’s…takes me a bit to find her sometimes! She seriously gets so quiet…sneaky little thing. She loves to jump and climb on anything she can and when she can’t jump off something she holds on to my hand (or not even holding onto anything) will jump in place. She love to crawl up in my bed in the morning and put her face as close as she can to mine and tell me to wake up…she thinks it’s hilarious. She’s got so much energy and spunk and is quite the littler character! She can be quite the handful because of that but she’s so cute and sweet at other times it makes you forget (for a second anyway… :) and I just love her to pieces! (Don’t quite understand that phrase really but oh well!)

So yeah! I think that’s all I have for now. I made a list last night so I wouldn’t forget everything I thought of and that’s all that was on there so I think I’m good! :) As of right now I don’t think I have a ton of pics of her…I really have been slacking on taking pics…I think I used up most of them on my last post but I’m sure I’ve got a few on my computer somewhere you haven’t’ seen! :) So enjoy and til next time!

Ok so I dug around for new pics and finally found a couple on my iPhone...the first one is from yesterday at Red Robin. We met my good friend Shauna (she got home from her mission last week, yay!!!) and while we were waiting Evelyn had a fun time entertaining herself with this balloon.

ANd the second one is from a couple hours ago....she's been refusing to go down for naps (I've had to take her on little drives where she's out in minutes but for some reason nothing will get her to go to sleep in the house...ugh...don't like this stage...). So I tried to get her to watch Pooh Bear (nice and calming right?) but no luck and then she started getting crabby and cranky and whiney and couldn't make up her mind about anything she wanted so I just sat down at my desk and started working on my current project and ignored her so she threw this little fit and finally fell asleep like this....

Don't worry, she didn't stay like this long...I put her in her bed :) but what a great example of her lovely stubbornness!!! :)

"Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass on a summer day listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky

....is hardly a waste of time."--John Lubbock--

Things have still been going along kinda slow and lazy with a few productive spurts mixed in. :) I’ve done a little bit of sewing, a lot of reading/watching movies (laziness here really, it was hot out!), taken some pics (although not many of Evelyn or anything we’ve been doing, I’ve been slacking there, these were actual photo sessions for my friend, more on that later!), and done a LOT of photo editing! Now that I’m trying to do more with my photography I’ve been trying to work on my editing skills as well, which was going ok. I know the basics of photo shop but not the good stuff to really make my pics look awesome (and since I’ve been messing around and trying to learn settings on my camera, they don’t always turn out the way I want so good editing is very helpful!).

So then one day I got a message from a fellow photographer friend who said she found a good website that’s been helping her with editing so I checked it out and am SO glad I did! They are called Pure Photoshop Actions and they are photographers who decided to make actions/effects from the settings they tended to use a lot in their editing. They have quite a few free actions and them some they sell so you buy/download the action, load it into your Photoshop and wa-la! AMAZING actions with AMAZING results! They had a sale right after I found out about them so I got two of their basic packages and it was perfect timing cuz I had just done a photo shoot for my friend Steph and her fam and was having some frustrating moments cuz I couldn’t edit them the way I wanted cuz I didn’t know what to do! Anyway, I’m sure this is more than most of you care about but I was really excited and after editing Stephs's pics(the full post is available here), I went back and started re-editing some of my older pics. So here’s some before and after pics (although now that I put them on the post it's a bit harder to tell a difference, it's easier side by side but oh well!)The first one is before and the second is after I’m VERY happy with the ones of Sierra’s and Sean’s wedding pics. I used my regular SLR camera for that so they were a bit dark/grainy and these new actions I got helped out a lot.

Anyway, I am much happier with my pictures now and am glad I got to take pics for Steph! Great experience for me and great pics for her! :)

As for projects, I’ve made a few more baprons for some friends of my with babies coming soon and I tried out a bit of quilting. I found this quilt tummy time quilt on one of the blogs I follow (can’t remember which one now…) so I thought it would be an easy project to start out with for quilting, and it was and it wasn’t :) I kinda just did what I wanted on the first one, didn’t turn out, then actually did what I was supposed to on the second, which turned out better but still a little bumpy/off on the back. Still very cute though! I’m using it as a baby gift so hopefully my friend is ok with it :) I’m starting on my third one and so far it’s going a bit better than the second but we’ll see how it turns out. It’s just something fun and different to do I guess and a nice baby gift to have around when you need it!

Another project I did was these super cute pillows! I found them online and showed them to Sierra and she wanted to do them so we did it together! She did black and white pillows and I did red. They are super easy and very cute for something so simple. It’s just some linen fabric with pin tucks sewn on the front to make a starburst effect. I love it. Sierra made hers to fit around pillows she bought and I stuffed mine with stuffing. Either way works and both turned out cute!

So as for Evelyn she’s just been her usual self…playing with cousins, playing outside as much as she can (when it’s not too hot that is, luckily this week has been pretty nice!), watching Dora (sooooo sick of Dora I am!!!!), trying to eat as many popsicles as I’ll let her, doing lots of coloring and playing with her trains, play food, and baby dolls (she’s been liking her dolls more lately, brushing their hair, feeding them bottles…very cute :), climbing anything and everything she can (she LOVES to climb), and all the while throwing in some of her lovely stubbornness into the mix. :) She’s pretty stubborn.

One GREAT thing is we broke the binky habit!!! I’ve been wanting to do it for a while cuz I was just sick of binky’s and making sure I had one and trying not to lose them…and it was just time to be done! So a little bit ago I started only letting her have them for naps/bedtime, which she wasn’t too happy about and threw some fits but luckily that didn’t last too long. The funniest part was in the car when she wanted it…I would tell her only for naps so you better close your eyes if I give it to you! So she’d take the binky, close her eyes, and fall asleep! It was great.

But then one day after a nap I noticed there was a hole in the binky so I ripped it off and was like, well, no more binky! It’s broke! So I kept it around for the rest of the day so when she’d ask I would show her and say, nope! Broke! Then later before bed she took it and threw it away! I was like….hmm….ok! And pretty much ever since then she’s been good without it! She asked for it a couple times but eventually forgot about it. So my two big goals for after our Cali/Utah trip are accomplished! She’s sleeping in her own bed and there’s no more binky! Now the next goal to work on is potty training….ugh…wish me luck! She has NO desire at all even to talk about it or anything so we gotta work on that. :)

Anyway, this is getting longer than I thought! Almost done though…I guess the last thing to talk about is my dear Sierra leaving! She and Sean flew out Wednesday and are right now in Alaska getting started on their big adventure there :) It was sad to see her leave but exciting too. The days before she left we spent lots of time together, us girls went out to lunch one day and a movie and the next day we got pedicures, which was very, very nice! I really needed that, nice foot massage and now my toes look pretty! :)

So yeah…I think that’s pretty much it! Except for the best news…which I’m not sure why I didn’t think of this first but whatever….so a month ago Mark told me some news but it wasn’t official so I wasn’t keeping my hopes up about it but then yesterday he called and confirmed it and then today it was facebook official so that completely confirms it (nothing’s official til it’s on facebook :) So the big news is Mark’s battalion is coming home in November instead of December! Not sure of the exact days yet but I am SO GLAD!!!!!!!! That means only 4 months left instead of 5 which sounds MUCH better and much more doable! So yeah for that!!!!! Oh, and in two weeks from today he’ll be HOME! Just for a week and a half but still, better than nothing! I’m so excited for that!!! These next two weeks can’t go by quick enough and yet I’m afraid they are gonna go slow…I don’t have much to do/planned so I need to fix that quickly! :) Anyway….that’s it for sure now! Hope everyone had a great 4^th of July and a great week! (Our 4^th was pretty boring/slow so sorry no mention here…). Here’s some random pics though!

Too CUTE!

Yes, this is a tub of cool whip....that's my girl!

See? My little dare devil climber!

Watching a video....remind you of anybody? (Mark....)

She couldn't quite get it

My beautiful "just because" flowers from Mark! I LOVE Peruvian Lilies!

She's been trying to skip out on naps lately and this is what happens at like 5:00...ugh!

This girl has got some faces! :)

Doesn't he look so enthused?

So sweet!