Baby Names

That title should get your attention :)  But this is not a pregnancy announcement (guys I just had a baby... remember?). 

I just wanted to tell you the story behind Jensen's name. 

McKay and I had a really hard time coming up with a boy baby name.  I could have 5 girls and still not run out of my "favorite" girl names, but I was stumped on a boy name.  So when we found out that we were having a boy we finally had to face our fears and come up with some boy names.  After much talk and a lot of "how about Bob?"  Um... Nope don't like it" we finally decided that we wanted the name to be a family name.  After we made that decision it was actually fairly easy to come up with a few names that we liked.  Apparently we just needed to narrow down the playing field.  In the end we came up with two different names, one from my family and one from McKay's. We loved them both, but for different reasons.  They were completely different names and kind of unique (ok Jensen is a VERY common last name, but not many are named Jensen as a first name) so we decided to just wait until we met the little guy.  My only rule was that we had to decide within the first hour or so after he was born.   For some reason I don't like it when people have a baby and then like 5 days later they name them... I know I am weird. 

Delivery day came and we got to meet this face...

Delivery was special, it was just McKay and I at the hospital for the first several hours getting to know our little man.  We decided within the first hour that we wanted his name to be Jensen.  No special reason, it just felt right. 

The name Jensen is from McKay's side of the family and was his Dad's mom's maiden name (or McKay's grandma's name).  So it was a last name originally.  McKay's grandma is an amazingly strong and faithful member of the gospel.  She owned her own farm, had 6 kids and served MANY missions for the church.  She has always treated me as part of the family since the day we met.  Such a neat woman and so I was very excited to name little Jensen after such a great example.

I was also named after one of my ancestors and I often wonder if they are proud of the way that I am representing their name and I hope Jensen will try and live up to his heritage too.

After we nailed down a first name we had to come up with a middle name.  This was my first experience with a middle name.  Growing up I didn't have a middle name (now it is Cannon obviously) and we decided to not give Adalyn one either so I was actually excited to choose one this time around.  We decided early on in our marriage (or maybe I just decided and McKay agreed) that the first boy's middle name would come from my side of the family since I don't have any brothers to carry on any family names.  So we decided to have Jensen's middle name to be Anthony after my dad (yes he goes by Tony most of the time) hi dad!  In the end I think it worked out perfectly to have Jensen from McKay's family and Anthony from mine. 

So there is the not so short version of how Jensen's name came to be.  :)




Part 2: (you didn't know that there was going to be a part 2 to this post did you?)

SO I have a confession.  A funny little nerdy thing about myself that I would like to share with the world. 

I was looking through my journal the other day and ran across a little gem...  WAY back when I was in middle schoolish (can't remember the exact date) I was really into coming up with baby names for my future children.  I even wrote some of them in my journal.

Ok you did too... yeah that isn't the strange part

I liked names that have a running theme between them

Like all of the names start with the same letter kind of themes.

Some of the "themes" that I liked growing up (ok I was nerdy) were-
-All the names started with T.  Such as Tasen and Tally
-You start with the letter A with the first child and then go alphabetically from there... Such as Adalyn (yes I chose her name back in middle school, still love the name today), Bella (liked it before Twilight), Ivy, Gaige, etc.  I had a boy name and a girl name picked out for each letter. 
-All of the kids would be named after cities or countries.  Such as Boston, Stockton, Paris, London, Adelaide, Dallas, Dakota, etc.
-All of the names end with an "n" sound such as Nathan, Dallon, etc.

Yes I am telling you all of these names because well, times change and I don't think that we will actually be using any of them for one reason or another. 

But

Secretly/deep down I still like/want my kids names to have themes.  Obviously at this point there is no theme, unless "lack of theme" is a theme, but we still might do themes with girls and boys (such as all the boys names would be family names), but we will have to see how it goes.  I already tried to talk McKay into doing all "A" names, but he said no.  So we will see if any of my other themes work out. 

I love thinking about names and I make McKay do it with me quite often.  Last Sunday we went over our baby names list and took a few off and added some really good ones that I really like. 

SO now is the time for you to comment and tell me how/why you chose the names that you did?  Do you like themes too?

Hope you are all having a great day!  Seriously.

Jensen-3 months old

Jensen turned 3 months old on 3-27-13.  Such a fun age to watch as he slowly moves from newborn to our bouncing baby boy. 

Jensen at this age-

*wakes up once a night on average
* giggles and has the cutest voice
*refuses to take a bottle, he just gags on it.  Amazingly he is very patient for his next feeding if mommy is not around to feed him at the three hour mark.  The other day he went almost 5 hours in between feedings and did just fine as long as he had his binky
*LOVES Adalyn.  She is the only one that can really get him doing he belly laugh.
*Lets you know when he doesn't want to be left alone, he is just as social as his sister but in his own way. 
*can now lift his head up during tummy time
*silence is not his favorite and prefers to have background noise even when he is sleeping. 
* wears 3-6 month clothes
* got another small cold this month, but is almost over it.  Hasn't affected him you can just tell that he is a little stuffed up.
*can grab his blankets now and will occasionally reach for toys.

Adalyn loves to "help" with Jensen.  She can't quite pick him up yet (thank heavens!) But she likes to roll him back and forth.  Sometimes she gets a little rough but for the most part they do well together.  I think she is mostly just excited for him to be able to do more so she is trying to move the process along by helping him learn to roll over.  :)

 

 

 
Love him, LOVE having two kids (seriously SO much better than one for me, I will explain in another post).  So happy to have him in our lives. 

Have a great day!   

I Made a Quilt

 I just finished a baby quilt for Jensen this week and I still like sewing. :)  This is the second quilt that I have ever made and I may have swore after the first one that I made that I would never make another one again.  My first one was back in high school for a Personal Progress project and my mom did half of it for me.  I didn't really like making it and assumed that sewing was just not for me.  But apparently maturity, age, and cute little kids to sew for can make a girl like sewing again.  No I am not going to go out and start sewing a ton (I would need to actually own a sewing machine to do that) but I may dabble in it again in the future.

This second quilt came about when one of my good friends asked me if I wanted her to help me make a quilt for Jensen.  I was nervous, but loved all of Adalyn's quilts that everyone had made for her and wanted Jensen to have a few too, so I agreed.  We made a girls day(plus our two kids) of it and finished the top in one day (we even bought the fabric that day and everything).  It turned out really bright, but still super cute.

 The next trick was finding the time for when I was going to finish it... SO when we went to Utah for a week I knew that this would be my chance to tie it and have my mom teach me how to bind a quilt.  My mom was a great help and I learned a lot.  We got it all done that week except I still needed to hand stitch around the border.  Last Saturday I finally finished that up and am now enjoying the finished product. :)  It is far from perfect, but I did it and am very happy that it is no longer sitting in a drawer at my house. :) 

Finished product-

So happy it is done!
Have a great day!

        

Grandma's House

Two weeks ago we had a fun but busy week in Utah on an extended vacation.  McKay/Daddy had to go out of town on business for a while so we thought at we would spend our week at Grandma's house.  McKay drove down with us on Friday March 8th and then he flew out from Salt Lake for a week and then came back and got us.  We drove home the next Saturday night.  We had tons of fun playing with everyone and it was a great trip after not coming to Utah for 3 1/2 months (Thanksgiving was the last time that we went).  It was the longest that we have ever gone without going to Utah since we moved to Idaho.  Luckily we had lots of family come visit when Jensen was born so it didn't feel like it had been that long.

My parents still had work and Mykelti had school while we were there so we entertained ourselves during the day and then played with them at night.  We fit tons of things in while we were there, and I don't think we have had such an eventful week since Christmas of 2011. :)   Here are a few of the things that we did...

*Saturday We visited Gandma Pace early Saturday morning before McKay left on his trip and went to see the ducks with her.  We forgot Adalyn's coat in Draper so grandma gave her one of her coats to wear and then she tied it on her with a scarf.  I REALLY wish that we had taken a picture because she looked hilarious in it.  McKay and I could not stop laughing, but Adalyn didn't seem to mind being tied up until she fell down while she was walking and couldn't get back up. 

source

Taz and Holly's Wedding.  My cousin (he is only 3 months younger than me and we went to the same school all growing up because we lived a few blocks away from each other) got married on March 9th.  It was a beautiful day and everything went well.  They are the worlds cutest couple. Seriously. We are very excited for them!  It was also fun to see lots of aunts, uncles, and cousins that we don't get to see very often.

*Sunday McKay left for his trip and we had a Fry family party.  Visiting, watching Adalyn do her thing, yummy food and basketball all made it a good day.  Here are a few attempts at some group pictures with some of the cousins. 

 

*Monday we hung out at my parents home while everyone worked

*Tuesday we went to Build-a-Bear and Adalyn got her first bear from there.  Growing up I LOVED that place and still have my bear and her clothes (yes I was just barely a kid, like yesterday, so build-a-bear was around then) so this was maybe just as fun for me as it was for her.  She is still too young to really care about dressing her bear up in clothes, but she loved giving it an air bath and giving it kisses.  So cute! 

 

 

 

 



 

*Wednesday we went to Ogden to visit Corinne at school.  Side note: She just got accepted into the Weber State's nursing program!  So Cool!  While there we went on a lunch date (love these and wish we could do them more often) and then to the park.  Such beautiful weather in Utah all week.  I actually got a small sun burn which I wore proudly when we got back to cold and windy Idaho.  :)

Um yeah she is pretty...

 

Addie is in the purposely not look at the camera stage so this is what you get...

 

*Thursday we went to Provo to visit Larissa at school and go on a lunch and park date with her (everyone needs their time with the niece and nephew) :)

 

 

That night we drove to Aunt Libby and Uncle Craig's house to have dinner and watch Trevor open his mission call.  So fun to be a small part of this mission excitement that is going through the whole church.  Trevor also had TWO other friends opening their calls that night.  The church has definitely been busy giving out calls.  I guessed that he was going to Brazil/South America but he will actually be serving in the Mexico Monterrey East mission and speaking Spanish.  Good luck Trevor! 

 

 

*Friday was a low key day getting ready for Daddy to come back.  He got back that night and we had a family dinner and then crashed into bed.  Everyone was pretty exhausted from the week. 

*Saturday #2 McKay went to his mom's house again and helped her do a few things around her yard and then he and I went on our monthly date before we headed for home.  We went to Ikea and then rock climbing.  We bought a few things at Ikea such as finger puppets for church for Adalyn, new bibs that will hopefully be easier to clean than our old ones, cheap white picture frames for wedding pictures in our room, and a salad spinner.  pretty random things I know, but we had fun just looking around and finding some things that we needed.  McKay LOVED having me come rock climbing and has been begging me for months to go with him.  It was hard and kind of scary to me, but I am glad I was able to do something that HE wanted to do since he does so much for me. 

Then sadly the week came to an end and we packed up and headed home.  The kids did great both ways in the car and were really well behaved for mommy the whole time McKay was gone.  Thanks mom and dad for all of your help with the kids all week and letting McKay and I sneak away on a date at the end.  Well that is all for today (a star for you if you are still reading), have a good day!

 

 



My Cycle of Home Decorating

Decorating is a passion that I enjoy.  I especially enjoy decorating my home and my children (as in choosing what clothing they are going to wear).  I probably enjoy these two things because they are the two things that I see the most of everyday and who doesn't want to look at something beautiful/cute.  As a stay at home mom I am constantly looking around my home and walls and day dreaming about this or that.

We have lived in our home for a year and a half and it is still only 1/2 way decorated.  The amount of money and time that it takes to complete the "vision" that I have for my house was something that I underestimated when I bought our home (along with many other things about buying a home, but we won't get into ALL of those details).  I was actually pretty frustrated the first few months that we lived in our home because I had expected for things to come together a lot faster than they were.  I am pretty sure we didn't hang a picture for at least two months because I was scared of putting a hole in my brand new walls.  The process felt like it was taking FOREVER and I felt like I was going to finish it just in time to start REdecorating since styles change so quickly.  Over time and practicing a lot of patience (because I am pretty sure that I would still love to go out and have a nice shopping spree and "finish" decorating tomorrow) I have learned that it is just a process that is on going and honestly I don't really ever want it to be 'done' since it is a hobby that I enjoy doing whenever I have the time and energy. 

Ok with all of that background information out of the way we will now get to the point of this post...

I have discovered that I gone through stages or a cycle while decorating my house.  Every few months I get bored with whatever project I am doing and so I switch things up and focus on something else.  Here are my stages thus far-

The perfectionist:
When we first moved in I just wanted everything to be perfectly organized.  I was very focused on everything having a specific place and everything to be in its place.  Oh and I wanted it to look pretty. :)  So I saved things in boxes and waited till I knew exactly where it was going to be put F.O.R.E.V.E.R.  But I soon got tired of having boxes so I just roughly estimated where things are going to go and put things there.  Everything basically has a 'home' but it isn't super organized.


Breaking in the new home:
After a few months I slowly got over my fear of putting nails in the wall and so we painted Adalyn's room and hung pictures in the living room.  We also bought my favoritest (totally not a word) piece of furniture... the dresser in our dining room. 

The only way that I would love it more is if we had a cute dining table to go with it (our dining table has definitely seen better days).  Things started to slowly come together but I was still super picky on what I wanted to go where.  For some reason I didn't feel like all of the old decorations that we had were good enough for our new house so I kept wanting to buy new things. 

Home Decorating... What's That?:
After a few more months of SLOWLY putting a few select things on the wall and painting our room and Adayn's I got pregnant with Jensen and basically went into survival mode for 3-6 months.  We did get a new to us, beautiful king size bed during this time from some very generous friends of our (pretty sure the bed is worth more than our car it is the best of the best) and I was SO excited to have space to sprawl out during the last few months of pregnancy.

The Procrastinator:
Then after we found out that we would be having a boy I started imaging and designing our boy room.  I was so excited that we would now get to have a boy room and a girl room.  ...But I still didn't actually do anything besides buy a crib.  Finally a month or so before I was due we kicked it into gear and finally finished the bare minimum on the boy room and added a few more touches to Adalyn's girl room.  To see what the boy room looks like today, click here. 

About the only thing I did finish while I was pregnant was this plate rack in my kitchen.  Unfortunately this is a terrible picture of it, but in real life I am totally in love with it.

Bored?  Lets decorate!:
After Jensen was born we spent a TON of time at home.  Recovery from my pregnancy went really well and I was able to bounce back pretty fast.  We still had to stay home a lot because it was the middle of winter so I used my time to get back into decorating a little bit.  This time I decided to try and use some the leftover decorations that we had bought for our apartment that were now just sitting in our basement.  And much to my surprise (haha I should have known) I was able to use quite a few things that we had that could 'work' in our new house.  More pictures got hung on the wall and things started to look a lot less bare.
I also finished a few projects that I had been thinking about/working on for a few months.  Such as... Adalyn's red shelves (one had been hung for a year, but I finally spray painted the other one). 

and I  finished a Valentine's wreath that I had started the year before but had to stop when my glue gun broke. 
p.s. I really like decorating for holidays, they are a good excuse to switch things up every few months. 

 

We had a fun splurge. We bought a leather recliner for our bedroom.  First piece of furniture in our whole house that we have bought brand new.  We went out and bought it ON THE DAY that I came home from the hospital with Jensen(nice timing right).  Shopping was pretty much the last thing that I wanted to do that day, but we wanted the chair and the wholesale warehouse was only open on Saturdays so it was then or never.  I really like having this chair in my bedroom and it is super helpful when I am nursing.  It also happens to match REALLY well with our bed frame

McKay got me a surprise for when I came home from the hospital/ late Christmas present.  New Lamps for our bedroom!  I have been drooling over clear crystalish lamps for our bedroom since the day I painted it gray, but I could never bring myself to spend the 60+ dollars that they cost.  So McKay spent the money for me :)  That man is the biggest penny pincher alive, except when it comes to presents for me he will spend tons of money.  I guess I can't complain too much because I finally got my lamps and they are beautiful. :)

A few other things I did was turn Adalyn's big girl bed into a couch with fun pillows for us to sit on until she out grows her crib,  and I got matching rugs and towels for our master bathroom (so exciting right?)

Current stage:
Then something hit me, still not sure what... but I am currently back to the perfectionist stage.  Daily I am decluttering (wow I feel like we have too much stuff) organizing and cleaning.  I am currently slowly gathering cute and coordinating boxes and containers to put things in so that the closets and pantry are less cluttered.  I even spent some of my birthday money on some baskets for our closet so that our stuff isn't just sitting out on the shelves.  McKay doesn't like plastic containers with our food because plastic is technically not very healthy for you so we are slowly getting glass containers to store our food in.  But I have a feeling that glass and toddlers don't really mix so we will see how it goes.  Luckily the containers are on the higher shelves so she can't reach them. 

Last weekend we went downstairs and found 10 big random items that we aren't using today and are in the process of selling/getting rid of them.  McKay is a saver so this stage isn't very fun for him, but I LOVE it.

Also we have now lived in our house long enough that I feel like I know what works best for us.  So hopefully someday we will actually reach the stage of everything has a place and everything is in its place.  It should hopefully make things efficient and easy as we are busy taking care of our little ones. 

I am most excited about a little command center that I am going to create in our laundry room that is just off the kitchen.  Maybe it will look something like this...

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I will keep you updated if anything too exciting happens.  :)  So there are all my house decorating thoughts and ideas (probably more than you ever wanted to hear). 

 

Oh and I have a feeling that I will be going into the home decorating... what's that? stage after organizing for a while.  And no it will not be because I am pregnant :) I will probably just switch and focus on another area in my life.  I can't stick to one thing for too long... 

Any projects that you are working on in your house?

Have a great day!