The Great Debate

Okay it's not really a debate... but I think about it a LOT.... What in the world will our little girl look like?  DJ and I have such different genes.  The only thing we have in common is that we're tall and thin.  Other than that, it's a toss up.  Here's some pictures to show how very different we were as kids:

Me at about 5 months (cause for some reason that's the earliest pics I have?)

So white and so bald.

DJ on his blessing day.

So dark and a full head of hair.

At about 6 months-- to reiterate my baldness.

 DJ probably at about 2.

Me at 3.

So so blonde.  And big blue eyes (which have since turned green).

DJ-- I'm guessing around 3.

Brown hair, big brown eyes.

So in the end-- who the heck knows who this baby will look like? I'm aware DJ has all the dominant genes.  But I still wouldn't be surprised if I popped out a baldie/blondie like me :)  Only 12 weeks til we know for sure!!!

4 Little [sock] Monkeys

The other day on Pinterest, I saw a picture of sock monkeys.  Now, I've never been a particular fan of the strange little creatures, but when I saw these I thought, "I know some kids who could enjoy these!"  My brother Josh has 4 children, who we call "The Monkeys."  I happen to have their family for Christmas, so why not make sock monkeys for my favorite little Kaiser Monkeys?  After doing one I realized it was soooo easy and that I should make a quick tutorial.  

For 1 sock monkey you need:

- 1 pair of socks

- 2 buttons

- needle

-thread

- fluff (that's batting, for you technical people)

Okay, here we go!

Turn one of your socks inside-out, and flatten it with the heel facing upward:

Because these socks were knee socks, I had to shorten them, but if your socks aren't so long you can skip this step:

Now from the cuff (or bottom of your sock), cut a straight line up the middle to about 1/4 inch below the heel. (The heel becomes the bum of the monkey)

Cut the heel out of the other sock.  This will become the nose-mouth (hahaha thanks, Matt).

From the other sock, after cutting out the nose-mouth (okay, it's probably actually called a snout...), cut out 2 arms of equal length and width, a tail piece, and two half-circles for the ears:

Sew the feet and legs together, leaving a small opening in the crotch so you can turn it right-side-out and stuff:

Turn right-side out:

...And stuff. Then sew up the crotch.  Hooray, you have the body:

Sew the arms and tail together, leaving the end open so you can turn them right-side out.  Then stuff the arms.  I opted not to stuff the tail; I like it a little floppy:

Hand stitch the nose-mouth to the front of the face.  First, it looks a little deformed, and you may think you've done something terribly wrong:

But leave a small opening, stuff the fluff in there, and whip stitch it shut, and your nose-mouth takes the proper shape:

Now whip stitch the arms and tail on.  It clearly doesn't have to be perfect:

Here's what it looks like from the front:

Next sew on some button eyes, the ears, and hand-stitch the mouth, and you've got yourself a sock monkey:

Here are the 4 I've made:

One for each of my favorite monkeys!  (Carly, if you read this, no telling that I'm sending these to them.  After all, it's for Christmas!)

Post Me Up Some Halloween

Last week, my cute nephew asked my sister to "post him up," meaning he wanted her to post pictures of him on her blog.  It's probably my new favorite phrase :)  

So here's some pictures I wanted to post up of Halloween yesterday!

Keesh and DJ made a great pair:

DJ's mustache worked great for his costume, but he was thrilled to shave it off at the end of the night!

And then Wario (Matty) came in on the scene:

And Superman (Davey) made an appearance:

We had a party with all the Provo sibs:

Nikki, me, Kristi, Sean, Matty, DJ, Keesha, Davey and Meg

And me and Alexsi rocked our skele-costumes together :)

I saw a costume like this on a blog last year, and I hoped that someday I'd be preggo on Halloween so I could use it!  Who knew it would be perfect for one year later???

Happy Halloween!!!

It's Happening...

Those side-effects I've always equated with pregnancy are finally kicking in.  I have become one snarky pregnant lady, believe you me.  I mean, let's be serious, I've always been a very straightforward, tell-it-how-it-is person, but I think I'm becoming extreme now.  I need to have some sort of filter or something!

ALSO-- two nights ago we were supposed to have a hot dog and marshmallow roast up the canyon with DJ's siblings, but my body was just so exhausted that I wanted to stay home.  I told DJ that, and explained that I wouldn't mind one bit if he still went.  Naturally, he opted to stay home with me.  That made me feel a little guilty, so I started being moody (like the, I-feel-bad, I-might-cry kind of moody).  Then he asked what we should eat for dinner, and I started crying, because, "We don't have any food!!!" (In reality we did, just nothing that either of us wanted.)  In the end I ordered a pizza for DJ and ate plain white rice myself.  It was just ridiculous that I even cried?  It was an emotional night.

I feel like I've aged about 10 years.  Or 50, I'm not sure.  My knees and feet have been KILLING me!  A few nights ago I colored, cut and styled both Nikki and Keesha's hair (which, for the record, looks pretty awesome!), and that's usually no big deal.  I obviously love doing hair, and had a blast doing their's, but man did I ever feel it that night and the whole day after!  I came to the heart-breaking conclusion that I'm probably going to have to call doing hair quits until after Lexsi comes.  So sad!  But my poor body just can't handle it along with a full time job and full-time baby growth.

Apparently, I've become a snorer.  Poor DJ!  I've never been a snorer unless I was SUPER tired or something... apparently I've been snoring every night for the past week or so.  I really do feel bad for him, but what can I do?  I just don't know.

All of things are not necessarily ideal, but I don't mind them.  Remember how I chose to have a baby?  Oh yeah, that means I chose everything that comes with it :)  I sure do enjoy this crazy ride!!!

Things that weren't funny at the time but are now.

Today, I've had lots of funny thoughts about things that were either annoying, sad or frustrating at the time.  I'm a firm believer in laughing at yourself, so I'm just going to make a list of things that are super funny to me now that were NOT at the time they happened.

1- When we first moved into our current ward (which I lived in as a teenager), everyone was calling me "Ashleigh Kaiser-Savage."  I was constantly upset that people were hyphenating my name, when Kaiser was no longer my name!  Clearly, they were just clarifying that I was the same person they knew as a teenager, but for some reason it really irked me.  Now I realize how ridiculous I was being.

2- Getting broken up with over a text message while at Niagara Falls with my family, a few hours before heading to the airport to fly home to Utah and see this boyfriend, who I hadn't seen in a month because I had been living in New York, participating in the Hill Cumorah Pageant.  Yeah.

3- When DJ and I were dating, I was always the first one to text him in the mornings (because he got up at like 4 to do janitorial work, so I'd text him when I got up and was on my way to work).  One day I thought I'd just not text him and see how long it took him to text me instead.  After waiting about an hour, I texted him and I was SO upset (Nikki is my witness) that he wouldn't text me first.  Of course, why would he, I'm sure he thought I was still asleep???  Silly girl.

4- That one time I ran over Adam's car.  Seriously-- I backed my Durango over his Neon.  Like, well over his hood.  It was SOOOO not funny at the time.  I felt like such an idiot.  Especially because he wasn't even engaged to Meggin yet.  But now-- every time I see the State Farm commercial where the girlfriend is ragging on her boyfriend for backing over another car in a very similar fashion-- I can't help but laugh about it all.

5- Moving into Nikki's apartment and the two of us not liking each other-- because I am assertive and she was not, and she didn't like that I was older than her (cause in her mind then she thought the oldest was the boss, or something?).  Good thing I ended up with her brother-- in some strange way that eased the tension?

6-  As children, Meggin and I were in bed one night when the fire alarm went off.  Naturally, we thought it was a real fire, so we army crawled across our bedroom floor, grabbed our porcelain dolls (what???), tested the doorknob to see if it was hot, and proceeded to crawl down the hallway.  It turns out Josh was playing with matches and threw something in his garbage can or something like that and it set off the fire alarm?  But man, had it been an emergency, at least we had those dolls!

7- Last Thanksgiving Eve, walking down Main Street in Lovell with Nikki late at night, in the bitter bitter cold, both of us crying our eyes out about our terribly hard lives, and me yelling at the sky, "I'M A BARREN WOMAN!!!!" I'll be honest-- this was a tiny bit funny even at the time.  But now it's even awesomer.

8- The night before I was going to Lovell for the first time and DJ and I had a talk, basically with me saying I was ready to get married and him telling me he wasn't quite there yet-- and me having a COMPLETE come-apart.  The next day, while I was working at the MTC, I was texting Nikki about it and accidentally sent the text to DJ, then I started bawling, thinking he was going to hate me or something, so I called him in a panic and cried to him, and called Nikki in a panic and left her the most distressed voice mail of life, and all this time I'm outside the building the barbershop is in, and Elders are walking past looking at me like I'm crazy.  Let's be serious, I was crazy.  But now?  This is high comedy.

9- When I was in 5th or 6th grade and Josh was in high school, we had gotten in an argument (which was typical-- he always knew how to get under my skin, and I was the annoying, sassy little sister), and I was so flustered and frustrated that I screamed at him, "It's your OWN--- FAT--- FAUUUULLLLLT!!!!!"  He thought this was hilarious, because it was the meanest thing I could come up with at the time.  I did NOT think it was funny, cause I was fuming.  However, this has become a much-used family phrase, and has also caught on in some of the Savage Family as well.

The moral of these stories is-- learn to laugh at yourself.  Even tough and upsetting things may end up making you laugh one day!

Conference Crafts

DUH!  I never even showed you the stuff we did last weekend during General Conference!

The entirety of my Saturday was consumed with making this puff blanket:

I do love it, but MAN it took much longer than I expected.  It's also very small.  But it fits perfectly in our little cradle:

DJ and Keesha took it upon themselves to make Alexsi a blanket as well, and clearly it's just their style:

Haha I love them!  On Sunday, my carpal tunnel was acting up (no seriously-- I really do have carpal tunnel), so I couldn't make another blankie like I wanted to.  So, I did a few easy crafts instead.  First, this flower hanger/wall art:

I know, it's slightly ridiculous that I have so many flowers for my little girl.  But, in my defense, I got them for ridiculously cheap off alwaysunderpay.com, and you have to have an order of $35 I think.  So, I had to buy a lot since they were so inexpensive.  And I definitely don't regret it!  I can wear these in my hair as clips and I can clip them to her headbands.  She's going to be one stylin little girl!  I also love that I can hang this on the wall in her room and it will double as a decoration!  To make this, I just took the glass out of a picture frame, then hot glued ribbons across it, then clipped the flowers to the ribbons!  Easy-schmeasy.

My second project on Sunday was this:

This picture does not even do justice to how adorable these letters are!  I'm going to hang them on the wall in her bedroom.  The wooden letters are from the Hob, and I just covered them with scrapbook paper.  Easy and cute!

Along with our productive crafting, I must say that I LOVED Conference (no surprise there)!  My favorite talk was probably Neil L. Andersen's.  I also loved that Sister Dalton spoke directly on how to raise daughters.  Elder Holland's talk in Priesthood Session was incredibly powerful, and anyone who hasn't watched it yet really needs to!  I love that we have such inspired leaders to tell us exactly what we need to hear!  I'm also thrilled to hear about the second Provo Temple!  I told my mom about a month ago that I thought they should build a temple where the tabernacle was, and I was so excited to hear that it's actually going to happen!  Of course, I won't be in Provo anymore when it all comes together, but I'm still thrilled that it's happening!  I'm also excited for the first Wyoming temple!  Even though I'll still be going to Montana to the temple when I live in Lovell-- because Star Valley is about 4 hours away (or is it 6-7, Nikki?  Bahahaha!)-- it's really cool that the first temple in the state is on it's way!!!

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changin!!!!

If you're in Utah County, you can feel the awesomeness of fall in the air!  It's been raining for a couple days, and I've been able to bust these babies out:

Oh, how I love my galoshes!!!    Today, it snowed in the mountains.  SNOW!   In the first week of October! Do you realize how amazing that is?  I seriously LOVE weather.  I love all the changing seasons.  I love sunny days, rainy days, cloudy days, windy days, snowy days--- everything about weather just makes me so happy!  It reminds me of how much my Heavenly Father loves me!

And speaking of changes-- with fall in the air, I felt the need to change my hair.  I decided to go with a dark brown underneath, leaving it blonde on top.  What's funny is, I ended up with this:

Yep, I'm a redhead.  Totally unintentional.  Here's the thing:  My hair has NEVER taken red very well.  So this time, I decided to color it straight red first, which I expected would end up pretty streaky, then color my brown over the top.  Well, I colored it red, and for some strange reason, it actually TOOK the red.  Vibrantly.  I blame it on the pregnancy hormones raging through my body.  Do you know how many pregnant girls' hair I've colored with no crazy effects?  Yeah, I'm the first with the madness.  So-- I colored brown over the red.  I also had to color my blonde a dark blonde/light brown, because some of the ends had turned pink from the red underneath-- nice.  Well after round 2 it still was quite red, so I had DJ color over the red again with a golden brown, hoping to cancel out some of the red.  He did a wonderful job, I must say :)  Well, it's clearly still red. But, surprisingly, I LOVE it!  It took some getting used to, but I'm super happy with it right now.  Zac told me it's "much more better," so I feel like I got the seal of approval ;)  It was funny how all the girls at work reacted-- everyone loved it!  One lady told me it made me look young.  Hmmmmm.... I'm only 24.  Was blonde making me look like an oldie? Cause, I'm naturally blonde.  Another lady told my I looked "hip."  That was probably my favorite compliment of the day!  Hahaha!  ALSO-- the red makes my eyes look fabulously green.  Gotta love that!

 Anyway, happy fall!   It's baking weather, my friends!!!