Friday, May 18, 2012

melting crayons

Many months ago I saw a melting crayons project on pinterest.  The crayons were lined up at the top of the canvas and just melted down.  I thought it was neat and easy enough that maybe even I could handle it.  Fast forward a couple of months and I finally bought the supplies.  Fast forward another couple of months and I finally completed the task.  When I bought the canvas and crayons Brennan really got excited about the project.  Good thing too, because he was the one that really made it happen. He also found the idea to put the crayons in a shape and have them melt outward.  We are really pleased with the way it turned out.  If we were to do it again we would probably buy a bigger canvas, but since we originally planned on doing the row of crayons at the top we thought this one would be plenty big. And we were pleasantly surprised by how quickly the crayons would start melting after we put the blow dryer to them. We thought it was going to take forever.

So the verdict: pretty easy, and it looks pretty cool too, at least we think so.

Thursday, May 17, 2012

the end of a fun weekend


Our weekend fun continued with Mother's Day.  Well my fun continued anyway, I'm not sure how fun it was for Brennan.  It has always been a tradition on Mother's Day to serve my mom breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  Even since I got married I have always helped with any of the meals that I have been around for.  But now that I'm a mom I get to just eat and I love to do that. :) We were at my parents' house for the whole day.  My dad made some yummy yeast waffles for breakfast.  He and Brennan made us some grilled roast beef sandwiches for lunch. And then Rich and the kids joined the ranks for dinner and we had fry bread with fajita meat on top. It was delicious! We topped it all off with homemade strawberry ice cream and made from scratch brownies. A day full of eating way too much, no changing diapers, and a beautiful necklace from Brennan and Tatum made my first Mother's Day better than I could have imagined.

And for reasons other than being able to stuff myself silly, I really do love being a mom and I am so grateful to have Tatum.  I am learning so much and hopefully becoming better every day.  I am so grateful to my mom and the great example that she is.  I can honestly say I have never met anyone more generous than that lady.  She is a better mom than I deserve and the best grandma Tatum could have asked for.

This is the card Tatum and I made for her.

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

the start of a fun weekend

Our weekend was jam-packed with fun and excitement.  Brennan had just finished finals so I suppose it was only right that we have a thrilling weekend.  Alright, alright, it doesn't take a whole lot to get us excited around here, but it really was a pretty fun weekend.  We kicked it off with some yummy pizza and games with the Lights.  Then on Saturday morning Andy was nice enough to take Brennan out on his boat to go fishing and Tatum and I got to hang out with Gretchen for awhile.  The boys were gone for about 5 or 6 hours and guess how much they caught. That's right, not a thing.  Maybe next time boys. :)  My dad gave Brennan a haircut in the afternoon and we got to go play tennis, which we haven't done in a real long time.  And then we ended the day by celebrating Macy's 8th birthday and baptism. Kids sure do grow up too fast. It's hard to believe she is already 8.

Macy was nice enough to pal around with us during the day, keeping Tatum company.
 
Tatum's new favorite toys are her toes.
Macy and Tatum before the baptism.
With Macy after the big event.
Caden and Brennan gave the talks at the baptism and it was a great program.  Caden managed to make me cry during his. Speaking of growing up too fast, when on earth did he become a little man?! I am so grateful that Tatum has 12 awesome cousins to look up to.  They are all such great examples for her.  We are proud of you, Macy, and the decision you made! Thanks for letting us share in your day.

Monday, May 14, 2012

he joined the club

Brennan ran a half marathon about a week ago up in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin.  My brother-in-law, Rich also ran it, making him and Brennan the newest members of the Cardon half marathon club haha.  Out of the 10 siblings/spouses, 9 of us have run at least one half marathon now.  I will go ahead and take this opportunity to taunt Caleb (the only one yet to run one), even though I am pretty sure he doesn't read this blog.  Come on Caleb, everybody's doing it.  It's time to follow suit. :)

Crystal, Kelbie, and Caden ran the half too. Everyone did a great job. And they had some fantastic cheerleaders. :) The weather was perfect for the runners but a bit chilly for those of us watching.

Brennan and Tatum before the start of the race.
 
Grandma and Jade cheering everyone on.
 
 
Kelbie and her posse.
 
Caden had quite a bit left to give at end of the race. He surprised us all with quite a sprint to the finish line. I mean check out that blur. :)
 
Me and Brennan after the race.
 
They gave out chocolate milkshakes at the finish line. Brennan was nice enough to share his with me and Jade.  It was pretty yummy.  It was a long day, starting at 4 am to get ready to make the drive up to Wisconsin, but it was fun to cheer everyone on.  We also stopped at Galena, Illinois, on our way home.  It's just a little tourist trap but it was fun to check out some of the shops. I wouldn't mind going back sometime when it's not a crazy packed Saturday.

Good job Brennan! And Crystal, Rich, Kelbie, and Caden!

Friday, May 11, 2012

pictures, pictures, pictures and....pictures!

Mara and Jade came to visit! Yay! I pretend they came to visit me but really they came to see grandma and papa.  It's okay though, because I just tagged along and showed up constantly and bugged them as much as I could. :)

Mara decided to surprise my mom this time.  So everyone knew except for her.  Usually Brennan, Tatum, and I will go over to my parents for dinner on Sundays.  It's a nice way to make sure we see each other regularly.  But we needed to pick Mara up in Moline on a Sunday night. This required me to lie to my mom, which I am not very good at, and it caused me to be convinced that my mom knew.  Something I said or did had given it away and she knew Mara was coming.  But she didn't! I didn't ruin it!  So on the way from the airport to my parents' house we came up with all sorts of clever ways to execute the actual surprise part. We played around with the idea of involving Skype, since Mara will typically Skype with my parents on Sunday. But by the time we got to their house it was after 10 pm (a result of a missed landing, long wait for luggage, and stupid construction).  So we threw out all of our good ideas and just decided to knock on the front door, which is virtually never used.  Of course my dad answers.  He tells us we are crazy to think that mom might actually come to answer the front door that late at night. Genius that I am, I say tell her it's the cops.  Really Rachel? The cops? I don't know what I was thinking.  But it worked and she came to the door, looking quite scared I might add.  It was worth a laugh or two.

The rest of the week we spent a lot of time visiting and enjoying being outside.  Mara and I made some headbands for our girls, and by "Mara and I" I mean mostly Mara. :) It was a lot of fun to spend time with the two of them and to watch Jade with Tatum.  We are excited for their newest family member to come in August!

So without further ado, here are all those pictures I promised in the title.

With the missed landing and all, we ended up spending a good deal of timing waiting in the car.


One day they came down to visit us at our place.  Jade had a blast pushing Tatum in the swing as hard as she could.  She was also sure that Tatum wanted ALL of her toys.  At the same time. So she piled them on top of her, one at time, while giving her a good push in between each one. Quite the grin she has.
 
Jade enjoyed cuddling with some Curious Georges while we were shopping.
 
Tatum now prefers to ride in the stroller without the car seat.  And this picture is also showcasing one of the headbands "we" made.
 
Jade loved to love on Tatum. It was pretty cute.  But as soon as Tatum would reach out and touch her she would tell her to go away. Apparently she only likes when she initiates the affection.  Sounds a little like her mother wouldn't you say Ben? Here she is hugging her and then getting grossed out when Tatum tried to kiss her back. :)


Good times at the park. Tatum enjoyed her first time swinging.
 
We were sure to play a lot of games. Playing games is the best. Here Jade was helping Mara in Oodles of Doodles.
 
Apparently Jade is in a don't-photograph-me phase.  So usually when a camera came out she would turn away and smile because she thought she was oh-so-funny.  She was in a crazy mood one night and I got this great "cheese" out of her.
 
Please just enjoy this next series of pictures.  They were just too cute to weed any out.

Apparently something is interesting over there.
 
So interesting that we must open our mouths wide in fact.
 
Jade has lost interest, but not Tatum.
 
 
A favorite game of Jade's was to give Tatum her binky and pull it back out repeatedly.
 
So satisfied when she as completed the task.
 
One day the girls happened to have similar outfits on so we put the same headband on them and snapped a few photos. I didn't get any great ones, but they are still cute. :)
 
 
Well I think I have shared enough pictures haha.  We had a great week. It has been an adjustment to go back to our lonely life.  Come and visit us again soon guys! 

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

explosion

Sometime around when Tatum was 1 month old she had a phase where every time she pooped it would be an explosion. She would go 5 to 7 days without pooping and then she would have a real doozy.  It got to the point that all of her clothes were getting poop stains on them and so whenever she pooped we did this:
 
As soon as we could tell she was working on it we would lay her on a her changing pad and take off her pants and lift her shirt up to her armpits to avoid any stains.  This lasted for a few weeks and then it seemed the phase was gone. She was pooping more regularly and it seemed to be staying in her diaper just fine. And so we let our guard down.  Big mistake.

When we got to Church last week (which is about a 25 min drive for us) I realized that my diaper bag was still sitting on the couch at home. How could I forget the diaper bag?! Who knows, but there was no way we were driving all the way home to get it. I knew I could borrow a nursing cover from someone and a diaper if we needed to, but church is only 3 hours long so as long as she didn't poop we would be fine.  Well Brennan had her during the third hour and he came to get me out of Relief Society. She pooped.  Apparently quite a bit because he was holding her out away from his body.  So I borrowed a diaper and wipes from a friend and off he went.  I saw no signs of leaking so I really wasn't worried. But as I waited and waited for him and he didn't come back I started to wonder.  I found him after Church and this is what little miss Tatum looked like:
 
That's right.  She got poop all over her dress.  What's even better is that Brennan had to stay after Church for his calling so I was stuck in the foyer with my little orphan child dressed in the jacket from her dress and her tights.  Can you say ghetto? But she sure is proud of herself.

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

yum!

You can tell she thinks she is pretty cool in this one.









Tatum got to try rice cereal for the first time about a week and a half ago.  We decided to go with the naked method since we didn't know how big of a mess she would make.  We had a busy week last week so we haven't tried it again but it looks like she liked it. :)