Deal of the day

Check out the great buy in the clearance section at WalMart!

I know right? You'd better get out and stock up.

School is starting!

School started yesterday for Bart and tomorrow for Lisa. We decided it would be fun to make some new clippies and barrettes for Lisa to wear with her new shirts. I have scads of ribbon, buttons and jewels leftover from my scrapbooking days so this project was just a matter of hunting up the glue gun and some unused barrettes.

I think my favorites are the little 'flair' badges that American Crafts makes. They were really cute glued to a plain snap- barrette, or in the middle of flowers and bows.

Good and bad

Good - I had another visit with the podiatrist yesterday.

Bad - The arches of both feet hurt now.

Good - The high-ankle pain has mostly gone away.

Bad - The dr. said that I've injured the structure that holds up the arch in both feet!

Good - I don't have to wear The Boot anymore.

Bad - I have to wear those lace-up braces on both feet. They are fashionable and go with everything.

Good - I can stop taking obscene amounts of ibuprofen because it was making me ill and giving me headaches

Good(?) - I get to take steroids for 12 days.

Really Bad - I might be not-running for another month at least!

Totally Stupid - there's no way I'll do the race on Sept. 5

I can't decide if I want to keep riding my bike or if it will put strain on the arches of my feet. Thoughts? Experiences? I might give swimming a try, even though I hate to swim.

Andrea & Rob's wedding!

You may remember this cute couple from their engagement pictures a while ago. Well they had a lovely wedding at the Salt Lake Temple and here are some of their pictures.



I love Andrea's dress - very different from the current trendy dresses. She looks so statuesque in it.



Whoa, this is starting to feel like a lot of pictures! I picked out only my very favorites but there were a lot that I loved!



They had a lovely backyard reception with tons of yummy food, beautiful decorations and even a fire pit where you could roast your own s'more. It was seriously so awesome!





Congratulations!

Nine years!

It's kind of hard to believe that it's been that long... but it has.

Sadly we were married in a small town that is short on quality photographers. So this is the only wedding picture that I really like. And it was taken by Brandon. The rest of the pictures he took were extreme closeups of people who wondered what on earth he was doing. At least we got one, right?

I have great memories of our wedding day. We were both students in the Geology program at USU so my dad searched all around until he found a fist-sized, pure white rock to put on our wedding cake (I still have it.)

We were married at the country club and some of our guests sneaked down the hill (with their golf clubs!) and played a few holes.

It took approximately 14 hours for the photographer to arrange every imaginable combination of family members for all his pictures ("ok now we'll have the groom, the ushers, the caterer and all of the sisters who are 5' 5" or taller"). During that time no one would let me sit down (because I would wrinkle the dress) or eat anything (because I'm a klutz I guess.) So my dad got me a delicious cherry coke and held it so I could sip it through two of those red coffee straws. I thought it was really cute.

The receiving line broke apart about halfway through the reception so some of the guests came through the line to be greeted by random friends.

Mostly I remember how excited I was to be marrying the greatest guy in the world. I love you!

Jam time!

Last year we made several types of delicious jam. My favorites were definitely plum and peach raspberry. So when Joe's boss gave us another few bags of plums, it was time to replenish our jam supply for another year. We had fewer plums but still have a few bottles of peaches left over. So I did half straight plum jam and half plum-peach.

This year the plums were pretty ripe and that made things much easier. Squeeze them by hand or crush with a potato masher to squish out all the juice. Bring the juice and the crushed plums to a boil. You can strain out just the juice and make jelly. I just pulled out the skins and pits, leaving the pulp in the juice.

For the peach-plum jam, put your bottled peaches in the blender and pulse a few times. Mix the plums and peaches in any ratio you like - I did about half and half. Follow the directions on your pectin to make and process the jam.

It was definitely a successful experiment! The kids were so excited and have eaten toast, rolls or crackers with jam every day since.

Maternity pictures x 3

My sister-in-law and her two best friends are all pregnant with their first babies. They are all due in different months so their cute bellies are all different sizes. For this special occasion, they wanted a unique photo shoot. Sadly the weather just would not cooperate with us and it started to rain and thunder - we just didn't get too many pictures. But I really like these.

Look how beautiful they all are - expecting those cute little bundles.

Amanda is having a boy, Alexa is having a girl and my sis Jackie won't find out for another 2 weeks!

This dog belongs to the owners of this orchard and it just took a liking to all of us and wanted to be in the pictures too.

Some progress

So today I'm back in two regular shoes. I'm going to either go for a relaxed pace walk or a bike-ride with the kids. I'm kind of hoping that everything feels OK. Keep your fingers crossed!

Bell family pictures

Last week (before I hurt my foot obviously) I took pictures for this fabulous family. They found a great location - this antique store that I had never seen. The opportunities for cool photos are endless and we all had a great time!

As you can see, there were a lot of people in the shoot, so there are a lot of pictures here too! These are just a few of my favorites, we got so many that I loved.







Thanks so much you guys - I had a great time with all of you!

Busy doing nothing

For some reason, 'resting' all day makes me more tired. So I decided to set some realistic goals for today:

- Have a house that is marginally cleaner than it is now
- Avoid smelling my son's breath whenever he breaks out the toothbrush and demands that everyone partake of his bubble-gum-scented teeth.
- Do 50 crunches on the yoga ball
- Convince someone to bring me a light-lemonade from Sonic
- Make the kids do at least 6 laps of the yard to burn off some energy
- Prepare at least one meal that doesn't come, in its entirety, in a box
- Steal my uber-cute niece so that Minnie has someone to play with

Yep... it's shaping up to be a fun-filled and exciting day. Here's a video to make up for the lameness of this post.

The Boot

The whole Boot thing is quickly approaching 'rigmarole' status. Getting the thing on right takes up more time than doing my hair, putting in my contacts and getting dressed. So that will either tell you that it takes a long time to put on, or that primping doesn't take up a big part of my day.

Here's the process. Even though I don't like socks in summer, the thing is uncomfortable without them.

Over the sock I wear a lace-up ankle brace. It is like a stirrup that supports the arch of my foot. It has these hard plastic shunts inside of it - but I had to take them out. They hurt so much! I have to lace it up really carefully since any wrinkle will hurt after a while, making me have to start the whole process over.

Next week I should be able to wear just the smaller ankle brace with regular shoes. No sandals or ballet flats for a while. But for now I wear this boot over everything. Inside the boot is another arch support and various paddy bits of foam.

Usually I have to extract one of my kids from the boot, since they think it is hilarious. 12 miles of Velcro later, the thing is on. Invariably something will itch or pinch and I'll have to start all over. Thank goodness it's summer and I don't have the added complication of long pants to contend with.

My left shoe has 2 different insoles and a leather puck inside of it, to raise that heel high enough to let me walk without limping. All told, I'm probably 3 inches taller right now. Which is nice because I can reach my top shelves without dragging out the step-stool. So... there's that.

This is not going to help my 5K time

Mystery sore ankle was diagnosed as tendinitis. The fabulous doctor I went to was a marathon runner and he said he wanted to treat it aggressively, immobilize it so it will heal quickly and hopefully get me running in time for the Sept. 5 race. So I'm in a boot for this week and possibly next week but I might be able to do some bike-riding to stay speedy.

Trying to look on the bright side, I guess it will slow me down enough to sort through and edit the 800+ pictures I took over the weekend. So there are those to look forward to!