Halloween!!!

I had this vision of a costume I wanted to make Jordyn.  It was an adorable pinata.  So cute and I figured it was kind of gender neutral for any future toddlers we are blessed with.  But a whirlwind hit just before Halloween.  I got called to be the young women president in our ward, and my etsy shop Junebug Jane got cRaZy buzy.  So, in the hour before our ward trunk-or-treat I quickly put together a "Baby Ruth" candy bar for Jordyn.  Honestly, the quickest costume I have ever sewn!  And, the best part, it was only $2.00.  I made the Almond Joy and Mounds costumes a few years ago.  They are great costumes to pull out in hurry!

The weekend before Halloween, Chad and I got a baby sitter and went to an adult party with some friends.  Plus we had the trunk-or-treat.  And then on actual Halloween night we took turns taking Jordyn around our neighborhood, which is prime trick-or-treating territory.  There are a gazillion houses and the are all squished together.  Perfect for a little "Baby Ruth"!

Fort Fun

 

Chad is so much more fun than I am.  I was upstairs doing some sewing during conference weekend, when I came down.  Our entire family room had been fort-ified.  Jordyn and I are pretty lucky to have such a fun guy!

Jordyn's 2 Pictures...

I posted these on fb a while ago, but I also need them in my "journal" to remember them for the future.  The outfit is courtesy of my mom.  I swear Jordyn has cuter clothes than I do.

 Jordyn at 2:

• Is an ok eater.  She will eat any fruit, anything with cheese, and anything sweet, and pancakes.  She is a grazer and eats best when she can just have a bowl of snacks and return to eat as desired.
• At her 2 year appointment, she had lost .5 a pound.  The dr. ordered some blood tests to try and get to the root of the problem.  Dr. also referred her to a pediatric cardiologist for a murmur we have been hearing for about 6 mo. now.  All tests came back fine.  She is healthy, just little.   I wish dr.s would stop giving me a hard time about it.  We were also referred to see a pediatric GI, but I never made an appointment.  I just feel like she is small and a mediocre eater and there is not "root" problem. 
• ABCs is her favorite song. Suddenly one day, she could recognize all the letters and their sounds, but she still gets confused sometimes.
• Counting lately is 1,2,3,9,10,9,10,9,10.... every now and then she throws a 6 in there. 
• Every color is "been"  (green).
• She still loves Blues Clues.  She likes to sing along, especially with the mail song.  There are also some Leap Frog shows on Netflix she likes, which is the only reason she knows ABCs.
• Napping is ridiculous.  She just plays in her room and destroys everything for 2 hours every afternoon.  She just learned how to open her door and sleeping has gotten even worse.  We just bought door knob covers so hopefully that helps. 
• She often cries so hard she barfs.  She also passes out easily.
• She likes to clean up.  She hates messy hands.  She gets really worried when she spills.  She might be a little OCD.
• She really likes other kids, and get so excited about nursery every week. 
• She is such a drama queen.  She has a fake little whimper, sticks out her bottom lip, pulls puppy dog eyes, and says "sad".  It makes me worried for the future!
• She LOVES her dolls and stuffed animals.  She is always having them go "nigh-night".
• We love her to death and have so much fun with her! She is like a little adult and talks and interacts with us like she is a grown up.  She is my little buddy and side-kick.  I would be so bored without her!

Don't kid yourself...

I really meant to add this little diddy to our family pictures post, but I forgot.  We took 150 shots that day.  About 8 were worth my time in editing.  The first few shots taken were the ones I edited.  Jordyn thought the camera was so cool on the tripod.  She would count to 3 and then I would click the remote.  She could hear and see the camera go off and thought it was just magic.  After a while though, the magic wore off and most of the pictures were just frustrating!  This is a sequence showing how most of the pictures went:

This is how we do photos....

First off, we don't pay for a photographer.  We are much to cheap for that kind of professionalism. A tripod and remote control cost less than 1/2 the price of a photographer. Secondly, we don't do it on a sunny day. No.  We wait until it is fall and cold and our cheeks are rosy.   And in a studio...that would be much to easy.  Thirdly, we don't chose a location like the park or somewhere we can easily drive to.  Not us.  We pile all our crap into the trailer and ride our bikes, praying we don't get rained on. 

As you can see, I make this all much harder than it needs to be, so we don't do family pictures often.  So you will probably see these on Christmas cards for the next 3 years.

Birthday Week!

The last week of September is Birthday week around here.  On the 26th, Chad hit 27 years.  We celebrated by going to Dave and Buster's without Jordyn!  Our first date alone since we moved to Colorado over a year ago.  We weren't going to go out because Chad was having a crazy busy week at work.  But I just felt like it was time to be a big girl and get a baby sitter.  It is not that I don't want to leave Jordyn (trust me, there are some days that is exactly what I want) and it is not that I don't trust anyone with my daughter.  It has just been that I don't know the youth here very well, and I don't want to burden any of our friends.  But my visiting teachers came to the rescue and offered to watch her for us.  So, Happy Birthday Chad, you got a meal in peace and quiet and rock the arcades.  But for the record, I won ski ball.  Let it be known.

Later in the week, we took Jordyn to the aquarium in Denver. It was such a cute aquarium! It was like the Disneyland of aquariums. Everything was decked out, decorated, and the atmosphere was so fun. A few years ago, the aquarium was bought by Landry's Restaurant chain, so they have a fancy sea food restaurant inside the aquarium. You get to eat fish, while surrounded by fish. A little ironic, but fun still. Jordyn was so excited about the fish! She just ran from tank to tank and pressed her little nose to the glass. She would point to all the fish in the tank and count "One, two, three, ten nine!" It was fun to see her so exited about it!

She called the jellyfish "bubbles".

 

On Sunday, her actual birthday, I made her wear her new birthday dress to church.  She was ticked cause she wanted to wear pants.  And thus, these pics are not the best. Yay for 2!

Sunday evening, we opened gifts, ate cake, and skyped with grandparents.  She was spoiled by her grandparents.  We got clothes and a trampoline for our little jumping Jordaroo.  She was equally excited about both. but mostly excited about balloons.

TOFW

Time Out For Women.  Who knew?!  It is one of those little gold nuggets in life that I discovered this weekend.  A friend told me about the Denver event and organized a group of women who wanted to go.  We went on Friday and heard from Sheri Dew, Virginia Pearce, and Jenny Oaks Baker.  It was a great night!  We went out to eat, spent the night in a fancy hotel downtown.  Ate lots of snacks.  Chatted and laughed a LOT!  Saturday, we heard more great messages from more great speakers.  We ate Indian food (my first time) and tried our best to keep our eyes open after our late night!  Thanks for the fun weeked girls!

 

PS...This event travels all around the country.  If you are looking for a fun girls weekend, look it up!

Another Zoo Day

There are some holidays when I get more homesick than others.  It is always the little holidays, like Labor Day.  As always, I give Chad a fair warning and tell him we need to do something fun or I will probably cry.  He listens well!

We wen to the Cheyenne Mtn. Zoo in CO Springs on Labor Day.  We love a good zoo.  Jordyn loves the animals.  We like this zoo because it is a little more intimate than the Denver zoo.  They have a little petting zoo section and fun playgrounds.  There are a lot of animals you can feed too.  Of course because it was Labor Day it was pretty crowded so we did not stand in any food lines to feed anyone but ourselves.

I love Jordyn's face in this picture!  So excited about the giraffes!

Made friends with the goat.

Utah Vacation!

Before you read this post, take a deep breath, cause it is long.  We were in Utah for almost 3 weeks and there was not a day that we sat still.....

We drove to Utah on Aug. 9th and made our first quick stop in Gunnison, to pick up a second car.  Then we had dinner with some of our favorite Utah friends, Nikki, Jody, and Meggan, and their little families.  I am so grateful I still keep in touch with these friends.  It is so nice to know that even though we are far away, we still have friends in Utah and we always look forward to seeing them.  Nikki was such a good host and allowed the kids to play in the water.  Jordyn had been in the car literally all day and was exstatic to play!  That night, we drove to SLC and stayed with Chad's grandparents.  As always it was great to see them, even though it was brief.

The next day, Chad went golfing with his brother and Tarrin was nice enough to let me chill with her and the kids.  And I finally got to meet the twins!  So adorable!  That afternoon I met my little bro at the airport returning from his mission!  Welcome home Connor!  He got to meet Jordyn for the first time.  She was mostly concerned about showing him her bunny.

We left the airport and drove to Bear Lake.  I had never been there, and I tell you...GORGEOUS!  Chad's parents rented this awesome house.  We spent a day at the beach playing in the sand and riding wave runners.  Jordyn was in heaven!  Unfortunately, I had to leave Bear Lake early to go to my brother's homecoming (which is why we needed the second car and wich is why I only took 100 pictures instead of 1,000!). I know that Chad had a blast sharing Jordyn with his family as they toured caves, played games at the house, and enjoyed  Bear Lake and Logan. Thanks Rod and Lisa for providing such a great get-away for the family!

Do you love how her fat cheeks just roll out of her life jacket?! She was great not to whine about it and wear her life jacket whenever we asked.

When the Bear Lake portion of the vacation was over, Chad and Jordyn joined me in Gunnison to go to Lake Powell.  Oh, how I love Lake Powell!  It was different for me this year.  I realized it is much less of a relaxing vacation now that I have a child to watch.  Less relaxing, but more entertaining.


What is it about digging holes in the sand that is just so satisfying?



More sand.  More water.  Jordyn LOVES the water.



We went for a short boat ride to the huge over-hang you see in the top left picture.  Chad also showed us all up by jumping a huge cliff.  You can see in the bottom left picture where the arrow is how high he was.  Crazy man. 



Skiing, skiing, and more skiing.  Chad again showed us up by getting up on one after only like 3 tries.  To make sure we all know how awesome he is, he crossed the wake the first time he was up.  Pictures are of .....
Top left: My dad.  He is 58 and still skiing like a pro.
Top middle:  Cody
Top right: Canyen
Bottom left: Chad
Bottom right: Casey
I spent a lot of time on the boat this trip because it seemed to be the only way to get Jordyn to sleep.  And the poor girl needed some sleep!

Jordyn learned lots of new words at Lake Powell.  She became obsessed with stars, and, and water.  After we left, I was putting her to bed at my mom's house and she laid there saying, "Oh, water. Oh, boat.  Oh, stars.  Oh, swimming.  Oh, sand..."  On and on, repeating all the things she loved about Lake Powell.

Chad and I split ways at Lake Powell.  He had to be back in Denver for a performance review so he drove home, and I went back to Gunnison with my parents.  Jordyn was pretty confused about the whole thing.  Anytime I asked "Where's daddy?" her reply was "Bye-bye, at the water".  I stayed in Gunnison for a whole week. I got to meet another new nephew, baby Kelton.  My mom started work and it was a really busy week for her.  I was glad to help out with all the kids staying at the house right now.  There were times when it got crazy, but honestly, it was mostly caused by Sam and I!  We wanted to have fun, but that meant taking three 1 year olds and and 3 year old every where we went.  We went shopping, and the park, the derby, El Mex (of course) and at trip up the mountain to roast hot dogs.

I love these mountains!

 

Being with family is great.  And Chad and I are so blessed to have great families who have so much fun together.  Jordyn and I flew back on Aug. 25.  That makes almost 3 weeks.  I was glad to be home with Chad, and Jordyn was glad to be in her own bed.  Bedtime on vacation is no fun for anyone!  Especially 3 weeks worth of bedtime.  I am glad to be in my quiet home.  After being in Colorado for a year now, I am so grateful we are here.  We definately made the right choice.  We have learned so much and become a different family than we were in Utah.  We are different church members here.  We are just different than we were.  Sometimes when I go back, I miss who we used to be.  But then I come home to Colorado and remember that this is a good life!

Monkey Girl

I don't know what has happened, but all of a sudden Jordyn has realized she can climb.  She is always up on our tall chairs and table.  The other day she climbed the railing overlooking our family room, just the way a money climbs a tree.  I have been watching her try to climb out of bed for a while now, but figured she was far from succeeding.  She succeeded.  She ran into our room this morning and woke us up.  My first thought was that someone was in our house and got her out.  Then my more rational brain woke up and I realized she did it.  She broke free.  I put her back in her crib and watched her climb out again.  We put her down for nap, and the same thing.  She climbed right out.  It is scary to watch cause she is just so little, and she just drops.

We bit the bullet and put up the toddler bed.  I really didn't want to.  I know naps and bedtime are going to be hard.  But she is not just going stop climbing out.  So I figured we might as well try to prevent injury and set up the toddler railing. 

I am not going to lie, a little part of me died taking down the crib.  The part of me that never wants her to grow up.  I looked at Jordyn and asked her why she could not just stay my baby forever.  She said "baby" and ran and got me her baby doll.  Then there is the part of me that so cherishes naptime! Oh naptime!  What will I do when it ends!  Jordyn on the other hand was exstatic about the whole thing.  Which is obvious!

What's New

There is really not much new in the Barton house.  Same old, same old.  Just living life day by day.  And in case you are wondering, here is what that is like...

Jordyn:
She is a sweetheart, but she is definitely coming on to two.  The fits are becoming louder and more frequent.   We are figuring out how to discipline, and it sucks!  We suck!  But with all the practice we are getting, I am sure we will get the hang of it.  Jordyn is talking all over the place.  New phrases come along every day.  My favorite lately is when she comes to me with her fake cry and holds up a finger or points to her toes and lets out a pathetic little "owie".  I give it a quick kiss and she shrugs her shoulders and says "all better"!  It makes me giggle every time.

Here are some 4th of July pics...  On a side note, Chad bought her this little golf caddy.  She is obsessed!  I know when to pick my battles, and I did not want a crying picture so I just let her hold on to the caddy.

This is her "cheese" face.

Chad:
Chad is really liking his job.  It is weird to think he has now been working for Microsoft for a year.  He has 5 accounts now.  He has one global account, which means he has conversations with people in New Zealand and UK quite a bit.  It is just kind of funny when he has a call with them on Thursday at 2 pm here, and it is already something like 8 am Friday there. But as much as he likes his job, he likes to golf even more.  He tries to go about once a week.  There were a couple weeks there he had to skip cause he broke a window of a nearby house.  Unfortunately he had to pay to have it replaced, so he took a couple weeks off.  Not his best game!

Mandi:
Staying at home has been a lot better for me the past few months.  I am doing some reading groups with kids in the ward and neighborhood and I love it!  When I started the process, I told myself I would be satisfied if I had 12 students.  I ended up having 14 students in June and 9 in July.  I have had some parents ask me if I will continue during the school year, so I am trying to figure that out and just how I want to run things for an after-school program.  I am also really enjoying Junebug Jane.  I average about one sale a week, which is just enough to keep my hands busy.  I don't make a ton of money, but enough for us to play with a little bit. 

That's all I have to report.  I hope everyone is enjoying summer, cause it is flying by!

Stupid People

Honestly, why do some people have to push my buttons just so.  For your amusement, here is a conversation I had on the phone with the receptionist at our dentists office:

Me:  Hi, I need to schedule check up appointments for me and my husband.
Lady:  Ok, what time and date works best for you.
Me:  It would be great if we could do it next Thursday or Friday.
Lady:  We are closed for the 4th of July weekend on those dates.
Me: You are closed on the 28th and 29th?
Lady: No.  We are open those days.
Me:  Ok... well... do you have any openings?
Lady:  Let me check.  We are full on Thursday and closed on Friday.
Me:  (silent sigh) What do have available the following week?
Lady:  We are closed for the 4th of July.
Me:  You are closed the entire week?
Lady:  No, we are open on Monday and Tuesday.
Me:  Well, what do have available those days?
Lady:  Let me check....We are full Monday and Tuesday.
Me:  Well, what is the next day you have any openings?
Lady:  We can fit you in on July 26th.
Me:  Ok, what times?
Lady:  We can put you in at 9, 11, or 1.
Me:  Ok, well I guess we will just take the 9 and 11 appointments.
Lady:  Are both you and your husband coming?
Me:  Yes.
Lady: Well I guess if you are both coming we can do you both at 9.
Me:  Great. Both at 9.

Geez!  It might not sound like such a run-around to you, but I swear this woman was either not paying attention when she was talking to me or she was just flat out clueless.  I was about to lose it! 

You have probably seen this, but I think it is hillarious.  True, a littl harsh.  But funny nontheless.
 

Furniture

The chair I wanted:

Isn't it beautiful!  The not so beautiful part is that it is $300.  Ouch.  I can't just drop that kind of money on a little chair like this.  I searched high and low and this one was the best price I could find.  And it was still just too much for an accent chair right now.

So, I decided to tackle upholstery.  I searched craigslist.  I miss KSL.com.  I looked at thrift stores.  I looked for months.  One day I drove past a little consignment shop and stopped to take a stroll.  I found a chair there for $35.  The only before pics I have are the detail ones I took before I ripped the chair apart.  I wanted to be sure I knew how it went back together!  You can kind of see the brown-ness of the chair.

So I ripped it apart, painted, recovered cushions, put in lots of staples, and finally glued the trim and voila!

This picture is taken at a distance for a reason.  Up close it is not as perfect as a $300 dollar chair would have been.  But it is good enough for me. All for about $80 and fabric to spare for other projects.  It was by far the biggest project I have attempted but I am satisfied!

Oh, what do you do in the summertime?

Every season I find myself thinking, "this is my favorite season".  Fall, spring, or whatever it may be.  This week I have just been in love with summertime.  It is so awesome that I can just send Jordyn outside to wander around our little backyard.  We got her a sandbox and she is so content to just sit out there.  I open the windows so I can hear her and check on her occasionally.  Every now and then she comes up to the window and shouts MOMMY! and blows me a kiss.  I just love her to pieces!

We got her this little pool last year.  To brag just a bit, we actually won it at an arcade, because we are awesome like that.

Feel free to marvel at her post-nap hair-do.  Its pretty impressive.

UPGRADE!

Of all the silly, unnecessary things to spend money on, a giant inflatable pool might be at the top of my list. Good thing we picked it up for free at a yard sale! Jordyn thought is was cool, but she mostly liked the little balls and tiny inflatable toys it came with. She just throws it all from one end of the pool to the other. She enjoys the pool, but I think Chad might enjoy it a litle more!