Sewing time!

So I have been on a sewing steak lately, and yesterday I made this little number for Camberlyn.

 

Talk about easy and fun! I took a toddler t-shirt some one had given us, took the sleeves off, took it on on the sides, finished off the edges of the new sleeves and added a flower detail from the scraps and ta da! Now she has a cute little summer dress to enjoy   :)

Money Matters

So Brynt and I are working hard to pay off all of our debt. We don't have that much, but we don't want ANY. Quite a bit of it is the baby bill. Babies are expensive, babies are especially expensive if your student insurance has crazy high premiums and pays for basically nothing. Grrr, what a rip off but oh well, we are dealing with it.
Last month we payed of the credit card. This week we have payed off  the hospital bill (YAY) and a few other smaller medical bills. It was a lot of money, and I am so glad we don't have to worry about it any more. It gives me so much motivation to keep going and do better with money.

We want to have everything payed off, and then go on a vacation. After the vacation, time to save for a house!  obviously we will have to take out a mortgage  for a house but we want to have a BIG down payment. And then work hard to pay off the house too!

This "pay it off now" attitude takes some life style adjustments, but its worth it. Brynt and I are 23, if we can train ourselves to make wise money choices now, and start working towards our financial goals early, there is a bright future ahead.

Mostly this is for me, and also about Mesa Falls

I have to get some of the things Cam does written down so I don't forget! That's why this is "mostly for me". And then I will write about Mesa Falls in the same post because I am to lazy to start another one (how sad is that?).

So about Cam:
Quick story from last Saturday:
Brynt and I were sitting on the couch and I layed  Camberlyn on her back in between us. Brynt was sitting kind of on the edge of the couch so there was a gap between him and the and the back cushion; well as soon as I put her down Cam starts wiggling herself around so that she is laying between Brynt and the back of the couch. But she didn't stop there! She then proceeded to continue wiggling until she had gotten all the way around to the other side of Brynt. It was so funny, and she was so pleased with herself lol.

Cam is officially 5 months old now, and this is the stuff she does:
~Sucks her thumb. I tried and failed to prevent that one,oh well I guess.

~Laughs at jokes. This sounds ridiculous, but in the last week she has started to be able to tell when things are funny. We let her watch Baby Einstein movies and there are certain parts where the puppets come out and do something funny (ie. pigs getting muddy and so on), and she thinks its way funny! I absolutely love hearing her little baby giggles :)

~Puts herself to sleep. This is one of my favorites. We put her to bed in her own room and she puts herself to sleep... and then proceeds to sleep 12 hours or better. I love this so much.

~ Wakes up with a smile. My favorite part of the morning is when I walk in to Camberlyn's room to get her up, and she is peaking through the bars of her crib just beaming at me. She always wakes up like this, and it just melts my heart every time.

~Roles everywhere. EVERYWHERE.

~ Squeal/scream/yells. This one is funny, and loud. She started this a few months ago, but has really honed in on her talent for it in recent weeks. She will get excited about something, and then it starts. she squeals as loud as her little voice can, for as long as she can ha ha! Its really funny, except for some occasions like during the baby blessing at Church on Sunday... who am I kidding, it was funny then too :)

~Feeding herself. When I say feeding herself I mean it in the loosest definition of the term. Little miss independent likes to steal the spoon from me and put it in her mouth all by herself. She's pretty good at it, but it gets very very messy, so she eats with her shirt off these days ha ha.

~She loves to be outside more than anything, she just smiles the whole time. She fits in well with Brynt and I ;)


Its kind of incredible to watch someone grow and change day by day, I feel so blessed that I get to witness everything that she does.

And now about Mesa Falls-

At the beginning of  the summer Brynt and I decided that we would try to spend as much time as we could outside on the weekends.  So far we have done pretty well.
We've Gone Camping:

 We've Gone to Jackson Hole:

 We Went Home to AZ (although it was to hot to be outside the whole time):

And most recently we went to Mesa Falls:

It was Really awesome! We first went to the Lower Falls.

They were beautiful! The only bummer was that we couldn't get very close to them.  But Cam still liked it :)

Then we went up the road a mile or so to the Upper Falls, We were able to get REALLY close to them which made my day!

Everything about it was gorgeous, the sight, the smells, the sounds... I was in heaven. The canyon that the river flows through is so green and rich with wildflowers, its wonderful just to see how full of life it is. While we were enjoying it, Camberlyn took it upon herself to try to yell louder than the sound of the water fall. SOOO funny! As pictured bellow :)

After we soaked up how beautiful the Falls were, we hit the road again and found ourselves somewhere in Island park on a little trail. We love a little hike and this one (although short) was a lot of fun. Side note, we think we found pot growing a long the path, or at least a member of the hemp family LOL. It was great to see some of the great places that are around our area. The world is a beautiful place, and we try to get out and see as much of it as we can :)

Happiness...

Warning: this will be pretty mushy.

I love my life. Is it perfect? No, but it is very very good. My husband is wonderful, he's my best friend. We are goofy and weird, but we laugh a lot and we talk about everything. We talk about stupid stuff and serious stuff and everything that falls between stupid and serious. Some people have told me that we are still in the honeymoon stage, and that is why we get along so well. Maybe they are right, but I don't think so. Why can't two people just really love and enjoy being with each other? Is that really that far fetched?  I love my husband more because of the things we have been through, the tough stuff has brought us closer.

And then there is Camberlyn. She's pretty awesome. I know everyone thinks their kids are great, but I just can't get over how much I love this little girl. She has developed such a personality; She loves to be outside, she's super social, very very active and stubborn (Brynt says she gets the stubbornness from me, I have no idea what he talking about. ha ha). She has mastered rolling now, in fact she tends to show off now. She rolls everywhere, and if she cant roll to get where she wants to go she does this funny wiggle/army crawl thing... once this kid can crawl for real, I am in big trouble. She's a handful and a half, but she's so fun and funny. 

This little family of mine is great. Some days Cam is cranky, some days I am over whelmed, and some days Brynt is worn out, But we are here to help and uplift each other when one of us needs it. I love them, and I love this life that I am so privileged to live.

Happiness is not in things, it is in us.

Let's set the record straight here

So you know how on blogger you can see who visits your blog? Today I was looking through and noticed that I had a ton of visits from this one site, which I thought was weird so decided to check it out. Turns out it was an anti-mormonism chat room. Someone started a post saying " Friend of mine's post on how amazing it is to clean the temple", with a link to a blog post I had done about a temple experience Brynt and I had had. To which many people chimed in about how brain washed and pathetic I am, how sad it is that I don't know I belong to a cult, that I am a robot, that I am deluded, that I was married at 18 and brain washed into doing so, that I am dumb, that my name is too "mormony"(?), that I am uneducated and can't think for myself... and on and on.
I don't know who the "friend" was that posted my blog on the site. But obviously they don't actually know me. At all.
 I am a convert, I chose this life. I was not married at 18, I am not brain washed, my name is just my name and was chosen before I or my parents joined the Church, I do not belong to a cult ( I've done some research on those, pretty positive this is not a cult), I have lots to learn but I am 15 credits shy of my bachelors  so I consider myself at least somewhat educated, and I am not a robot because if I was I am sure my house would be much cleaner.  I am my own person and I do as I please. It just so happens that it pleases me to be a member of this Church. And you know what, I am happy.  And not a brain washed crazy person who thinks she is happy, I actually enjoy my life.

I respect other people's views. You don't like what I believe? That's just fine with me, It is a natural right to believe whatever we want. But don't make me the punch line of your jokes because of my religion. I won't do that anyone, because unlike you, my so called friend, I don't have to put others down about what they believe in order to feel good about what I believe.

2 Years ago

Do you ever wake up and go, " holy cow, a lot has happened in my life in the last 2 years". Maybe not that exact phrase, but something like that?
 Well this morning I did. which sent me back in time to May of 2010. At that time I was living back in AZ, working as a Physical Therapy tech at  Desert Hand Therapy and loving every minute of it. I love the field of physical therapy, it is incredibly rewarding to help people heal. I miss that job.
I was in a serious relationship with Brynt Barney, which in and of it self is a bit funny because I had said years before that that I would never date him. We were talking about getting married, and I thought that was huge. He had known for months that he wanted to marry me, but I wasn't sure if I was ready to give up my independence. But by the end of May, 2010 I knew I wanted to marry Brynt, I knew I loved him and nothing I ever did on my own would be as good as what we could accomplish together.

Now it is May 2012, I live in Idaho, I am a stay at home mom, I am married to the man I said I would never date (never say never right?), I have a three, soon to be four month old baby girl, and I love my life.
Things have changed so much in the last 2 years, it blows my mind. But I love it, every bit of it. I have learned that it is more important to make goals than plans. Plans get ruined... a lot, they have a set rout to get you to your destination and that's it. But goals are different, they give you a destination and let you choose the path you take to get there. Two years ago I had a lot of plans, most of which didn't come to be. Now I have a lot of goal, and I am excited to see what path my life takes to get to them.

A super classy bathroom picture of Brynt and I from 2010.  We've come a long way in two years, Ha.

Back Porch Garden Box

So Brynt and I love projects. making stuff, remaking stuff, its our thing.
Today we built a garden box for the back step, and its awesome. We live in a townhouse/apartment so we don't really have a yard that is "ours", its more like everyone's yard. But I really wanted to do a little garden this summer. Solution? This little guy.

This was honestly really easy. The side pieces are pre-made stairs that you can get at Lowes or Home Depot that we flipped over. We used 2x4's for the middle sections, it took five 8ft boards cut in half: two in the back of the top tier, two in the front of the bottom tier, one in the back of the bottom tier (laid flat ) and one in the front of the top tier (up right). We then covered the bottom of the box with screen door fabric... And that is it. Simple.

Then it was on to the fun part of filling it with dirt and planting! Yay! Here is the finished product.

Fits great on the back step and saves lots of room. I am a happy girl.