A mother's hands

So, you know those kiosks that are always set up in the middle of malls? I get so nervous walking by them. I know it's pathetic, but the people that work in them are like vultures. It's almost worse than walking onto a used car lot. I swear they can smell weakness, and I am oh so weak. I always feel bad ignoring them, especially after they've chased me halfway across the mall yelling "ma'am, excuse me ma'am, may I please have a minute of your time?". I try as hard as I can not to make eye contact, but they position themselves right in front of you to where it's almost impossible.

The cell phone people are usually the worst. They always shout at me as I'm walking by "who's your cell phone provider?". Without stopping and barely even turning my head I always respond "I'm happy with my service, and anyway I have a contract". To which they respond without missing a beat "I can get you such a great deal that it would make up for the fees you'd have to pay for breaking your contract". YEAH RIGHT!



Anyway, I've gotten off track here. Some of the kiosks are actually very useful and many of the sales people are very kind & helpful.



The point of all of this is leading up to a funny story. Usually the kids are a pretty good deterrent for sales people. They seem to realize that when they see someone trying to keep track of 3 kids & keep them happy that they don't really have time to stop to listen to their schpill. Well, I happened to be at the mall all by myself a couple of weeks ago (which is pretty rare) so apparently I was fair game.



I walked by this nail kiosk and the lady started speed walking toward me.

lady: "excuse me ma'am can I see your hands"

me: "I'm sorry, I'm in a hurry"

lady: (blocking my path) "this won't take long at all"

me: "um, well, okay"

lady: (starts buffing my nails) "this will be great for you"

me: "oh, actually I already have a kit like this"

lady: "really? which one do you have?"

me: "I don't know what it's called, but it has a buffer, a cuticle treatment and some type of conditioning serum"

lady: (with a look of disgust, like I have the worst hands she'd ever seen. Although admittedly they are pretty bad) "well you obviously don't use it, why don't you use it then?"

me: (a bit annoyed at this point...I didn't want to stop in the first place and now I'm being insulted) "because I have 3 kids, one of them being a newborn so I don't have a lot of time to myself."

lady: (takes a step back and looks me up and down) "you have 3 kids? You look great!"

Sure thing lady. Everything except my horrendous nails huh???

Needless to say, I didn't buy anything.

Happy St Patty's Day!

Yeah, I know, I'm pretty late on this. But what else is new?

We had a really fun St Patrick's Day. I had intended on making green eggs & ham for breakfast, but woke up and realized I didn't have any green food dye. So we just had regular eggs. Oh well, maybe next year.

Then my friend Emily invited us over so we could make some yummy green treats and let the kids play together. Luckily she was prepared and had green food dye. =) We ended up staying over there almost all day. Thanks again Em!

For lunch we had green pancakes with delicious home made green syrup, and green jello.

Then we attempted to make mini rainbow cupcakes, but as you can see they ended up looking more like tye-dye than rainbows. They still tasted good, and that's all that matters right? As you can see the kids loved them.

Later that night, my sister's kids came over for a little while. I made some chicken & green mashed potatoes. I think I added too much dye though, they were REALLY green. We all had green tongues and I had some green surprises waiting for me in Urban's diaper the next day.

This part is really just for the grandmas. I know that nobody else really cares. So you can stop reading if you'd like, I won't be offended. Actually, I won't even know. =)

Delilah also had her 4 month check up on the 17th. I can't believe she's already 4 months old. She's getting so big and doing great! She's just like Addison was: 25th percentile for weight & 75th for height. She weighs 12 lbs. 1 oz. and is 24 1/2 inches long. It's always so sad to watch them get shots, but she did really well. This is such a fun age, starting to get interested in and playing with toys and interacting with other people. I love it!

Disney On Ice

Disney On Ice was in Salt Lake last week so I took Addison to see it on Thursday night. She was so excited and we had so much fun. Mickey & the gang were there, then they performed scenes from Cars, The Little Mermaid, The Lion King and TinkerBell. She was most excited to see all the fairies, and they didn't disappoint. The show was really cute, we really enjoyed it. We were sitting pretty high up and with the movement and lighting most of my pictures didn't turn out, but here are a few.

Isn't that last picture great? Before the show started they had some Disney Princess gowns out on display. There were also a couple of princesses you could meet. Well, we started to look at them, but Addison was so excited about the show that she wanted to make sure we didn't miss it. All she wanted to do was get our snacks, find our seats and wait for the show to begin. So that's what we did. Afterward she wanted to go back and look at the gowns and find the princesses. We went back to the display area, but it was all roped off and there was not a princess to be found. This is her look of disappointment. It's also a look of exhaustion and junk food over dose. She did not want to leave until she got to meet a princess. While I was trying to coax her out to the car a sympathetic mom came up behind me and told me not to feel bad because her kids do the same thing. Oh the bond we share as mothers. =)

Blessing

For some reason blogger is not showing my pictures while I'm composing my blog, it's only showing all of the codes. This is making it difficult to add commentary so this post may be all jumbled up. I'll have to figure out what the problem is later, I don't have the patience at the moment.

Anyhoo, my parents came up to visit last Tuesday and stayed for Lilah's blessing. We had so much fun while they were here. We went and did lots of fun things like playing at FatCats & Boondocks, watching Blaise's soccer games, and just hanging out while eating yummy food and playing the Wii. That's right, I said Wii. We are so excited, that's what my parents got us for Christmas. We have wanted one for a long time and it didn't disappoint. It is so much fun! I'll have to post some pictures of us playing later. It can be pretty entertaining watching other people play. These pictures crack me up. Notice the difference in Urban's countenance from the top to the bottom pic. In the top one he was being goofy, standing on grandpa and looking pretty pleased with himself. In the bottom one he was told to sit down so we could take a picture and he is not amused.


Jared blessed Delilah this past Sunday. I love baby blessings, they are such a special experience. It's so sweet to watch the fathers hold their baby up afterward with so much love & pride. Delilah is such a wonderful addition to our family. She is such a happy baby. We truly feel so blessed to have her as our daughter.

Isn't she just the cutest?! I know, I know, of course I think that. What kind of mother would I be if I didn't? I love her to pieces. I could just eat her up...don't worry, I won't.
I'm pretty sure this face means "ENOUGH PICTURES ALREADY...NOW FEED ME!".





I had known for a long time that I wanted to make Lilah's blessing dress out of my wedding dress. I wanted all of my kids to have their own blessing outfit to have when they're older to either pass down or do whatever they want with. Addison wore my blessing dress & Urban wore Jared's blessing outfit. Well, of course when I got my wedding dress out I just had to try it on. It didn't want to fit, but by golly I made it. I sucked in & held my breath and Jared had to use both hands to zip it up but I was determined to get it on. Once I got it on I couldn't breathe, but it was oh so pretty.

Never mind the fact that I look like godzilla, it's a weird camera angle. At least I hope that's why I look like that! =)
Addison walked into the room and saw me wearing my dress and thought we were playing princess. So she went and got one of her princess dresses on.
I was really surprised how difficult it was for me to cut up my wedding dress. I really didn't think it would bother me. After all, it's been hanging in a garment bag in a closet for over 7 years now. When Jared saw me wearing it he told me it was too beautiful and I needed to save it for one of our girls to wear some day. I explained to him that no matter how pretty their mother's dress is, every girl wants her own wedding dress. Well, it sat in my living room for about 3 days before I got up enough nerve to cut out the pattern. When Addison saw me cutting it she told me that I needed to make sure not to cut too much, that way she could still wear it to get married in. There goes that theory! I'm pretty sure she'll change her mind over the next 20 or so years.

Cutting out some of the pattern is about all I got done. I saved the rest for my mom to do. She was really excited to make the dress and, let's just be honest, she did a MUCH better job than I could have. It turned out absolutely beautiful. Delilah looked so precious in her dress. I want her to wear it everyday. Would that be weird?
By the way, this girl just LOVES her grandmas. She smiled for the first time back in December when her Grandma Estes was here, and she giggled for the first time this last week while her Grandma van Rij was here. They sure make her happy. I must admit, I LOVE her grandmas too, she got some good ones!


Here she is right after we took the dress off of her, she was so happy. I don't think she really cared how gorgeous the dress was on her, she prefers comfort. Not to mention the fact that Aunt Heather is pretty funny.

This is Lilah with cousin Avery. Avery was so excited to hold her in her pretty dress. Avery likes having her picture taken, I think she's an aspiring super model. She posed perfectly in every shot while my kids were running around like maniacs. You can tell her mother is a photographer.

We had a marvelous week topped off by a very special day. Thanks to everyone who shared it with us.