hangin' with the Peelers

So this past week Code, Jake, and I have temporarily moved in with our Cousins' kids while their parents are out of town.  There's a 2nd grader, a 1st grader, and a 3 year old.  So, throw Jake in the mix and I'm getting a fun sneak peek at what my life will be like down the road.  It's been pretty fun.  Sure it's tricky as everyone is adjusting and getting used to their parents not being here, and us getting used to their schedules/the house but it's not been too hard.  So some things I've noticed in the perks of having multiple kids:
-there are more people to bug than just you so the percentage you get approached with: I'm bored, play with me-is def less....tho, if you have a 3 year old, it's gonna be higher, but still- they can play with each other and there's a slight chance that you can go unnoticed for 10 min at a time here and there throughout the day- Unlike with Jake, who INSTANTLY knows if I leave a room/try to do something productive.
-It's nice to have someone to ask to get something/do something for you and realize you don't have to do EVERYTHING.  I find I have to keep reminding myself not to do certain things cause it's the kids' chores...I think it'll be hard for me to let go once our kids are older and let them do chores even tho I know it means they won't get done well.
-It's pretty cool to see them playing WELL together (does it always happen-no) but it's cool when you hear them laughing/interacting together-fun to watch the dynamics/it takes me back to when I was a kid.
-Everything seems funner/more exciting when there are more people around: you can have teams when you play games etc.

Of course, the trickier aspects being it's quite an ordeal to take everyone out to do something, but then again most people don't go from 1 kid to 4 overnight so I guess you'd gradually get used to it.

Jake DEF is more entertained around here.  The first day, I could tell, he wasn't so sure...but now the kids and him interact a lot and it's a lot of fun.  Their youngest has also gotten better at sharing with Jake around.  And Jake is def loving the new toys/books to shake up his routine.

traaaaaaiiiiiinnnnssss.......

 and he LOVES the basketball

He's even had a few moments where he's balanced/stood up on his own for a few seconds before falling.  Being around all these big kids must be good motivation for him :)

she who must not be named

I'm sure by now all of you have heard the twitter around Miley Cyrus' performance on the VMAs.  I almost don't want to comment about it cause any sort of attention is positive attention to her-why else would she do something so horribly raunchy?  Cause it's easier to get negative attention and if in your business ANY attention is good for business than I guess she's taking the easy way out.  I mean, I guess it's out of the question to simply get attention for...I don't know....SINGING WELL??? apparently that's not enough-or, she's unable to, so she has to stoop to new lows.

I'm reminded of a story my mom told me about my Grandma Helen who passed when I was 2, but apparently was a very strong and determined character.  They were at Lake Powell on a skiing trip and they were on a house boat.  Apparently some guy water-skied by completely nude (first of all-so dumb of him-have you seen a wipe out on skis????), and Grandma Helen turned to her daughters/daugher-in-laws and said: "don't look at him girls, don't give him the satisfaction."


I feel the same way about Miley Cyrus.  I just want to say that I truly wish the world could just stop watching.  Stop supporting this kind of "entertainment" that...let's face it, belongs at a strip club.  How AWESOME would it be if the ENTIRE audience just got up and left,  Stopped consuming this sludge-set an example to the rest of the world.  How great would it be if nobody mentioned it the next day-there were no tweets, no magazine covers/articles, no tv interviews-just nothing.  Everyone could just turn up their nose at it with a derisive sniff?  How quickly would she try to change her image?  Maybe she'd spend a lil less time in the gym and more time in the PRACTICE ROOM perfecting her craft.  I'm just so sick of all of it.

 I can safely say that I will never buy her's or other artists' music who regularly and vulgarly over-sexualize and exploit their bodies-nor will my kids (I'll see to that don't you worry).  We will talk about why they are NOT good role models- that they deserve role models with substance-who care more about integrity, virtue, and work ethic, because that's what I want my kids to strive for.

Sadly our world is flawed-people gawk, people snigger and gossip while at the same time craving this ridiculous sludge, and so they encourage it and keep it going.  I wish I could live to see the day when this stuff is simply not esteemed as worthy of our attention, but I know that won't happen.  So the best I can do, I guess, is to raise children who don't esteem it and put a few more good people into the world.

Will Smith's and his family's reaction is PRICELESS-you KNOW they had a family chat about that on the way home.  Now THERE'S a family who, though involved in the entertainment industry, still has integrity and values talent and work ethic.  Keep it real Fresh Prince!

Captions anyone?

"Tha's NASTY!"

"Oh no she didn't!"

WHAT DO YOU THINK POLL???

So as I'm moving past my lil hair debacle, I have actually been thinking about cutting my hair short lately.  I've done the whole hair to the shoulders medium length a lot, but I want to try a shorter hair cut.  I don't think I want to go as short as a pixie cut or anything but maybe a long bob of sorts.  I've found a bunch of styles that i like.  I wan't it to be short but just long enough to where I could pin it back/curl it without it being too short etc.  I figure it'll be a fun cut for the fall/will grow out and be ready to cut again by next spring/summer.

What do you guys think?

beachy bob:

 curly bob:

 layered bob

 longbob1

 A-line

Right now I'm leaning towards the beachy bob or the A-line (last one).  They seem really cute, the only thing is it's been a LONG time since I've had bangs.  Which, I think I could handle having bangs again if they're long/swoopy ones that I could easily pin back or tuck behind my ears....still it blows my mind that I could have bangs again.  I grew mine out around 12 years old and haven't gone back ever.  But again, I think I can deal with long ones.....

Leave a comment and tell me which you like!  I asked Bethany at studio K which cut/style she thought would go good with my face and she said that most everything would probably go well with my face type....I guess we'll see...!!! (so excited, love change!)  cute shorter mommy cut here I come....

I had a bad hair day

Yesterday was our third anniversary. It started out like any other day: laid jake down for his nap, took a shower and started doing my hair extra nice for our date night plans....and that's where it stopped being like any other day.

 First I must say, which after reading this post won't need saying, I am not a super girly girl. I like looking nice but it doesn't come naturally to me like it does to some. Sure, I do make up fine, but my hair has ALWAYS been a source of frustration. I almost wonder if I should go to beauty school JUST so I can learn to do my and my daughters' hair (if we have girls) for the rest of our lives. Because I grew up in the 90s and had curly, fine, slightly frizzy hair, I was always jealous of straight-haired girls. TRUST ME. ALL the popular girls had straight hair-that's when the popular flat iron/super straight look got popular started by Jennifer Aniston on friends etc.

I remember on a youth temple trip in Houston, (the houston temple wasn't built yet so we would rent a charter bus and go to Dallas), some older pretty girls took pity on me, and since my hair was wet from the baptisms for the dead, introduced me to mousse for curly hair. For the first time I loved my curly hair-it looked good and wasn't frizzy-WHA?! Freshman year of High School a friend who also had curly hair introduced me to the flat iron. I could FINALLY have that sleek shiny straight hair I've always wanted! I had tried to use the blow dryer but it ALWAYS makes my hair puffy and frizzy-even with a diffuser so the flat iron was huge.

These two tricks-mousse and a flat iron are all I can really do with my hair. I never really bothered to learn any other way of doing my hair. Lately I've wanted to start branching out with hair styles etc. This being tricky since I have no natural abilities when it comes to hair. I know it sounds ridiculous but I never used bobby pins growing up. I just never did-back before I learned to control my hair those big clips were in fashion so I'd use those. Never mastered the bobby. So here I am, 27 years old, and I'm starting to use bobby pins. Also, I never really learned how to use a curling iron. Hello, I HAVE naturally curly hair, so I hated all forms of curls: natural or otherwise. But now, I have matured and realize that it does in fact look nice. I also, never really learned a good way to blow dry my hair cause, as mentioned earlier, it always made my hair poofy so I kind of avoided it.

So yesterday I was excited to try out a new round brush that I had bought (always had a paddle brush growing up/never used round brushes). I of course notice in the salons that the girls are able to get my hair pretty straight with a round brush and only need to use a flat iron a lil bit so I wanted to try and replicate what they do. So I brush through my hair, then pick a section of hair and roll it up in my brush ready to blow dry it out. It took exactly 2.5 seconds. I go to pull on the brush/bring it back down releasing my hair when, instead of unrolling, it just seizes even tighter on my hair. No amount of pulling could get the brush out. How could it be so unbelievably stuck after one roll of the brush?

 At first I stay calm. I can figure this out-I'm no stranger to tangles. So I start messing with it a bit-trying to manually remove my hair from the brush. Nothing happening. After 30-40 min of struggling I start to realize that I need a second pair of eyes here. Luckily Megan is with us until she starts at BYU next week so she could watch jake. I call Code and tell him the situation. As always he drops everything and comes running to my aid (I love having a husband who, when forced, can work from anywhere = AMAZING flexibility). So he gets home and starts working at it. We tried a lot of things: getting the hair wet, putting conditioner in it to make it slippery, cutting the lil balls off the brush bristles hoping it would make it easier to get the hair out etc. After 3 (yes 3) hours of repeated attempts to work it's way out it's a no go. It was still pretty stuck in there, though it was a lil looser, but not much. I could tell Code was losing his normally chipper/positive attitude and that this was more serious than I realized. (and yes I was crying off and on about the ridiculousness of the situation). So we start calling around to salons to see if anyone can see us. At this point Code was calling cause I was crying harder at the prospect of walking into a salon with all those eyes staring at me. Sorry girls, but you can be really judgemental when you all get together-something about concentrated estrogen in a small space. While I love getting my hair done, I hate all the gossiping and back biting that one overhears at salons-its kinda intimidating to me.

So we finally find a place that answered their phones and could work us in. Studio K in provo. Where is it? I ask, "oh, it's in the riverwoods." WHAT?!?! I freaked. It's one thing to go in to some free standing salon and be humiliated, but I have to walk through the riverwoods??? (a shnazzy, outdoor shopping mall in provo). More tears. Code was unbelievably supportive and understanding tho I'm sure his male brain was getting frustrated at my shallowness of not wanting to be seen with a hair brush hanging from my head. Finally it was 3 and we were quickly running out of options. I storm to the car so mad that this was happening to me. We walk in and THANKFULLY it was not in the middle of riverwoods so we didn't have to walk through the mall, but park right outside and run in. We walk in and thankfully there was a partition separating the majority of the salon from the view of the doors/reception desk. The receptionist came over and brought a girl from the back. She was really nice and sympathetic. I must have looked like death-it's def how I felt. No make up. A brush hanging from my head, my eyes all red from crying all day. She took me a seat (thankfully there were only a few clients in that day), and went back to get back up. She brought a friend who strangely wasn't even scheduled for the day but decided to come in anyway (can you say TENDER MERCY?!). They apologized again and again that this happened to me and cursed the brush and said we should burn it etc. They made jokes about getting me pain killer and got to work. They asked what I was trying to do my hair for and Code said it was our anniversary. Instantly they were "awwwing" and "oh-my-goshing" at how horrible this was etc. An HOUR and a HALF LATER the brush was finally out. I cried again, this time out of relief. They babied my hairs with tonic stuff and then were nice enough to curl my hair for me for our night out.

I really liked the salon and at this point I don't think I could ever feel embarrassed in front of those girls-it's like we've moved past any sort of surface level relationship. Needless to say we left her a BIG tip. The receptionist, Mic, kept coming back and checking on how it was going/was supportive, and when the brush finally came out everyone around me-even the clients cheered/and were sympathetic. I think I found my new salon-I liked the vibe in there and now I KNOW they can handle/fix ANYTHING. It's probably not the way they try to get clients, but it worked for them this time.

I think I cured myself of feeling discomfort/intimidated in a salon- everyone was so nice and there's no way I could EVER feel THAT embarrassed again. So the brush got stuck around 11 and we got it out at 5:30. Needless to say my head was raw/so sore/still felt like there was a brush hanging from my head still. Since Megan had been babysitting all day we went home to relieve her and we all went out to cracker barrel for dinner, which I was fine with cause I hadn't eaten anything since breakfast that morning. After we got home and put jake to bed we went out for our lil anniversary activity Code had planned.

 We ended up going up to Sun Dance resort for their moonlit ski lift rides. Apparently during the summer months, whenever there is a full moon, they turn on the lifts and you can ride them up and back down the mountain. It was really cool and we had a fun time (once we found how to bring the lap-bar down....yeah it was a tense couple of minutes- lift operator FAIL). Though it was a hard day, I was reminded again why I love Code so much. He is positive-no matter how bad the circumstance seems, He is UNBELIEVABLY PATIENT-prolly why he's so good at his technical job/finding solutions to bugs etc, and why he kept picking at my hair for 3 hours saying nothing but encouraging things, I (and jake) am his number one priority-even if he has to leave work in the middle of the day cause his wife got a brush stuck in her hair, and He's ALWAYS loving and supportive/sensitive to my needs. Were we able to laugh about it afterwards? yes, and we decided that it will definitely be one of our more memorable anniversaries. Let's just hope our future anniversaries will be memorable for more positive reasons...

Felt like this:

But I looked like this thanks to studio K and bethany!!! you ROCK!

(those are the lifts in the background)

 Thank you Code for running to my rescue and finding me help when you couldn't fix it! One of these years we are bound to have a NORMAL anniversary :)

I'm NUTS for FALL!!!

I randomly said this in a text tonight and all of a sudden thought...hey...this would be a really cute sign  with acorns on it or something/ fall decor of some sort....

It's true though.  Don't get me wrong, I like summer-fun in the sun and water-having lots of extra day light-all positives.  It's just....towards the end of August I'm all ready to move on.  I know there are people who are all about cold: skiing, hot chocolate, going to some mountain lodge etc.  and I know there are people who are all about the warm weather: laying out on the beach, tanning, shaved ice, and wearing as little clothes as possible all summer yadda yadda yadda.  Quite honestly I don't think I'd fit in either camp.  I'm all about the CHANGING of the seasons.  I don't want to live somewhere where it's cold 6 months of the year, and I don't want to live where it's ALWAYS hot until it becomes "nice" weather in the winter.  I want SEASONS.  I love going from a hot summer to a cooler fall.  I love the beautiful warmer weather of spring after a long winter.  The thing is, you need cold winters and hot summers to enjoy those seasonal changes-you wouldn't appreciate them otherwise.

that having been said, I'm stoked for fall.  It is BY FAR my favorite season.  I love the color schemes, the weather, the fact that it's JAM-PACKED with holidays so it always feels festive etc.  I'm O.D-ing on fall crafts on pinterest-seriously, it's not good ya'll.  I need more closet storage simply to hold all of my holiday decorations.  Here's one of the crafts i'm especially excited for....I'm also excited to one day own a house....that has a porch....that has a cute bench to display these on.....

see?  a totally needed craft-but hey, when I get that house and porch and bench i'll be ready come next halloween....
throw pillows

mommy brain?

Usually I am pretty on top of things, and if I don't end up doing something it's usually a conscious choice rather than forgetting to do it.  Lately though (really just this past week) I have had some serious mommy brain.  For example, the other day I was going to cook some chicken nuggets for Jake's lunch.  After preheating the oven I go in the kitchen to do it and then come back out waiting for Jake to wake up from his morning nap.  After 15 minutes I go to check on them when I realize they're still sitting on the cookie sheet on top of the stove.  I placed them on the sheet and never put them in the oven.
Yesterday I finally remember to do Jake's laundry.  I go to check on it later and it's just sitting in the washer-didn't add soap or turn it on.  And I thought I had a few good years left before the mind would go....

Live and learn and take a lesson from me :(

I've gone back and forth on whether I want to post about this, mainly because it's so embarrassing to me.  But if I can help anyone avoid a similar fate than I guess it's worth it, tho I doubt anyone would make my same mistakes.

I guess I'll preface it with the fact that usually I'm not very naive.  I don't click on things in random emails I receive, I don't even open those emails, I don't answer the phone when I don't know the number, and I never feel pressured by pushy sales people.  In fact, usually they only make me want to say no more.  Just ask Costco-they keep trying to make us upgrade to a higher plan, but it's only because we bought our treadmill there this year so it looks like we're spending WAY more than usual, but it was only a one time purchase-doesn't justify paying for a higher plan.

That having been said, I've never really had any experience with the "health industry".  Naturally cause I've always been healthy-ya know- to a normal degree.  I try to run every day, I may look at ingredients when I'm shopping and try to get the least processed option/no high fructose corn syrup etc, but I'll admit I don't go to whole foods, I eat things with gluten, I eat carbs, I don't eat green shakes, etc, and don't think i'll ever eat Kale or any other faddy veggie the new health professionals are pushing.  Not that there's anything wrong with that level of health, I just would rather live moderation in all things than jump to extremes plus i'm honestly too lazy to care THAT much.

So ALL of that having been said, I honestly don't know what happened to me this one day-I seriously must have had a blow to the head.  I was on facebook I think...and I see some article from a women's health magazine about some new asian fruit extract fad that's helping women everywhere shed the pounds.  The article is written by some staffer who tested it out, along with some colon cleanse product, to get ready for her wedding.  She went on and on about how it worked and how all her coworkers were jealous that she got the assignment etc.  At the end of the article was a link to a page that would get you a free 14 day trial of both-all you had to pay for was the shipping and handling.  The total for both came out to like 9 bucks.

Now, I don't really do fad diets.  I figure if you want to be healthy- eat less junk food/sweets, drink more water, and do some form of cardio every day.  If I had a nice weights set I'd say alternate between cardio and weight training.  That's it.  You don't need anything else. It may be hard and it may take a long time, but eventually you will see/feel results.  Since Jake I've had 10-15 lbs of extra weight that have been bugging me.  Since my birthday when I got my treadmill, I think I have lost some of that (I don't have a scale/really believe in scales), but I feel better and I'm noticing subtle changes.  I was tempted by this article.  It's all natural-some fruit extract that boosts your metabolism and the colon cleanse is "really healthy" for you.  It's just a 14 day trial- that's all I'd honestly need to loose my few left over lbs anyway, wouldn't need to buy anymore....and code and I budget a small slush fund for each of us every month so we dont' have to ask/can do whatever we want with it-i've even saved it over a few months time and bought me some toms shoes.  I love it.  So I thought meh, 9 bucks what the heck.

Now I'm sure by now you are all shaking your heads in disbelief and thinking, "whitney, whitney whitney..."  I know! (well, NOW I know).  I was dumb enough to assume that it was as simple as that. Well it wasn't and apparently, never is.  When I told Code about it later that night he asked, so are they going to charge you for anything else?  (even HE knew it was shady).  "no, no, just shipping and handling that's it-didn't say anything else about having to buy anything else."

So I get the stuff in the mail.  I realize pretty quickly that the colon cleanse is green coffee pills.  All natural yes, but not something I feel comfortable taking.  Oh well, it was just a free trial.  I was a little late so I wanted to wait and make sure I wasn't expecting before I took the other.  The next day code says that we've been charged 160 bucks worth of stuff from these companies.  WHA??? How could that be?!

After closer inspection, Of course as you all know I'm sure, somewhere buried in the terms and agreement page where NO ONE looks-cause people assume they're being honest about what they're selling, is the statement that if the customer doesn't call/email to cancel the subscription (that I didn't even know I had made) within 14 days of ordering, they will send you a fully-priced bottle every month and automatically charge you for it.  And because it's written in the fine print they can't get in trouble-it's my fault for not magically knowing that they were shady/criminals.

Needless to say I was furious.  i was able to get a hold of the carcingia, or whatever it's called, company pretty quickly and cancelled the subscription and got a partial refund.  The way they did it was, they send a full bottle of pills with 14 days worth deducted from the full price-for the first 14 days you are not charged and then they charge you for the rest of the bottle minus the 14 days worth of pills.  So you can't even get JUST 14 days worth of pills-how they get their hooks in you.  Getting a hold of the green coffee colon cleanse people was another story.  I went to their website and followed their instructions on refunds-by sending an email to a certain address which was suspiciously no longer working.  Luckily our bank let us know how to get ahold of them and since I had to use my debit card cause they didn't accept AMEX (gee wonder why) we had to cancel my debit card just in case in the future they don't listen and keep trying to charge us cause you can't dispute a debit card charge like a credit card.

So yeah.  I called the coffee people and canceled it and got a partial refund.  CROOKS!  So I am paying off the rest of it little by little every month with my slush fund (my terms not code's-i'm punishing myself for being so stupid.)  I prolly won't have fun slush money til next year sometime.
Sigh.....
So take a lesson from me- A.) don't fad diet/take pills-have the discipline to get and stay healthy the RIGHT way-the way that takes WORK and EFFORT.
and B.) don't trust ANY KIND OF HEALTH INDUSTRY PRODUCT-they're all scams and not worth the spike in blood pressure.

sigh.  live and learn.

it's always a good time

 We're enjoying these last summer days.  Sure from 11-6 it's pretty warm out, but if it rains the day before/or the day of it's PERFECT.  I love the way utah smells after a rainstorm.  While Texas has better/bigger rainstorms with more intense clouds (helps when the sky is that big), it smells like wet dog afterwards (at least to me).  We definitely take advantage of the cooler mornings after a stormy night.

Jake enjoyed his first trip to SubZero (local icecream place).  Once he realized what we had our personal space went bye-bye, almost like he hoped we'd get confused bringing the spoon to our mouths and go to his instead...

Today we went to the BYU Football practice/scrimmage.  I was surprised with how many showed up-prolly around 10,000.  I'll be honest-I'd never been to one of these things and I was expecting a real game (maybe not as long, but ya know- a real game against each other).  Instead it was a bunch of practices and then 3 lil blips of scrimmaging at the end-in my opinion not worth the heat/and cranky baby, but live and learn I guess.  Jake did pretty well all things considered so hopefully it won't be too hard to bring him along in the fall :)

In other news we're playing around with the idea of getting a house again.  There's a house on the market in Springville that has some potential, and there's a corner lot in a neighborhood that we like as well so the rest of this month we'll be crunching numbers and seeing what will work for us.  Not going to lie tho, the idea of building and making it how we want/plus the added time it'll give us to save up for a down payment is pretty exciting-plus will be easier to sell it in 8 yrs than if we bought a 10 year old house now.-hope it all works out!  I think it'll just be fun to have real roots down and not be renting anymore/getting some equity, and being able to do whatever the heck I want cause it's MY house etc.  We love Springville tho-it's close to provo/orem which we go to often while not being as busy or crowded.  I figure once Jake is older/closer to High school, then we'll look to move a lil more north-more options for schools/better programs/more competition etc. though after living in a big city in Texas where all the schools are 5A and HUGE it'll be different to see how Utah schools do things... but who knows if we'll still be here...I'm just glad that we're where we're supposed to be right now-a great feeling!

slowly but surely...

So our recent saga is getting Jake onboard with real food.  He seems to have transitioned perfectly to a milk bottle and no reactions from what i can tell (score! he didn't get that one from me).  He can eat great.  His favorites that he will stuff his cheeks full of until his tray is empty are: bread, cheerios, crackers, waffles, cheese.  Seeing a pattern here?  Like, zero fruits/veggies and only carby bread stuffs??  Yeah, me too.  My only guess is that Jake is a texture-sensitive kid cause he loved veggie/fruit pureed baby food no problem, but cut them into lil bits and he hardly will touch them.  Maybe he doesn't like them cause they're cold, wet, slimey, or that they don't break apart as easily in your mouth as bread.  Maybe it's normal for kids to resist, but it sure makes meal times suck.  I give him something he likes and something he doesn't but that I want him to eat.  I'll still put lil pieces on his tray for him to play with/experiment with etc but if I wait for him to eat those things on his own, it's not happening.  Then I chop up the fruit/veggies really well and spoon feed it to him.  He fights it, tries to spit it out, and cries, but after 20 min he realizes that we're not backing down and then he at least voluntarily opens his mouth for the spoon.  It's hard and frustrating.  I just hope he'll get more comfortable with these textures and gain an appetite for them.

In other funner news,
We went out on a date saturday night (it's been a really long time since we've had a date night sans jake).  We went to the temple cause it has been WAY too long, and then out to chik-fil-a and RED2.  It was ok (RED2-obviously not talking about chik-fil-a cause that's always good).  I would honestly give it a B- and I only give it that good of a score cause I liked the first one so much so I feel loyal to it.  It just felt rushed, like they were trying too hard to up the humor and action when they didn't need to.  I hate how hollywood is like that-who says the sequel has to be funnier/better etc?  If the first was a hit-it's not broke so don't fix it.  It was still fun to be out and about and I'm excited for Ender's game.

Also, this saturday is the free football scrimmage put on by BYU-can't wait!  Love me some football :)