Baby #2

Jared and I are excited to announce that we are expecting our second bundle of joy December 22, 2013.

Telling Jared:
After I found out that I was pregnant I wanted to tell Jared in a cute way. With Velocity I just told him when he woke up, this time I wanted to make it more memorable. After getting a positive pregnancy test (the digital kind cause we all know that is much simpler) I put it in a small pink and blue gift bag with white tissue paper. When Jared got home from work (and Velocity woke up from her nap) I had Velocity take the gift bag to Jared. She did GREAT! And Jared's reaction was great!! (Jared thought Velocity was just bringing him an empty bag so when he found out it wasn't empty it was even better). I should have taken a video or at least a picture of it but I didn't think about it.

Telling Family:
Jared and I waited until about 19 weeks with Velocity before we told our family. We told my side by putting her ultrasound picture in the bottom of Cassidy's birthday present. We told Jared's parents by making a scrapbook page with the ultrasound picture and left it on the fridge (they don't put anything on the fridge so it kind of stood out).

This time I figured we couldn't wait as long because mothers usually show quicker with each pregnancy so I figured I couldn't hide it as long, plus we were excited to share our happy news. We decided that we would wait until after our second appointment because it was the first appointment after first trimester. We had this appointment at 13w5d (thursday) and decided to tell our parents at the next family get together.

Jared's Parents:
We have sunday dinner at Jarends parents house every sunday so we figured we would tell them on sunday, and first (we decided we didn't want either side of the family to find out from facebook and it is a lot easier to keep two people who hardly ever use facebook to not mention it on facebook then it is 10 people who use facebook often..) For Jared's parents we decided to use an idea that we saw on facebook.

Jared saw this picture on facebook and shared it on my timeline because he thought it was cute. Jared's parents saw it and thought it was us making an announcement so we decided to do something similar.

For Jared we used a white shirt that said "I make adorable babies" in lime green writing. For Velocity we used a white onsie that said "Adorable baby #" in lime green and "1" in orange. And for me we used a white shirt that said "Adorable baby #" in lime green and "2" in orange on my stomach. We wore these shirts to sunday dinner and figured the bright colors on white shirts would be quickly noticed. BUT.. No one noticed. We ended up having Jareds dad take a family picture of us so we could send it to Jareds mom after she left. After having him take the picture we then had to point out our shirts to him. And then we sent a text of the picture and "baby #2 due december 22 2013" to her.

A close up of my shirt

Telling my side:

I wanted to tell my whole family while the whole family was there so I had to figure out a way to get the whole family together. With such a big family with so many different schedules that can be quite difficult. We usually do birthday dinners but didn't really have one close so I decided to text Shalei and see if she worked on monday. She happened to have monday night off and so did Jake so I talked to my mom and told her we should do a family BBQ because it would be "fun" and so we planned a dinner for monday night. 

To tell my parents we got Velocity a pink shirt and wrote "only child    expires: dec. 2013" and put her in it for the dinner. Everyone at my parents house noticed her shirt really quick.

Facebook:

For facebook I set the family picture as my cover photo and the picture of Velocity from my parents as my profile picture and set my status as "It took a year to lose all the baby weight... and only 14 weeks to gain it back (well some of it)...... baby #2 due December 22, 2013" with the following photo. 

Father's Day 2013

This year was Jared's second father's day having a child. Last year I made a salt dough and made a plaque with Velocity's hand and foot print and then spray painted it camo (after baking it to make it harden). Sadly it broke in half and I still haven't fixed it (although it is on my to do list, so I will eventually get there...)

This year I wanted to do something just as meaningful. I found a cute handprint poem on pinterest http://crafts.kaboose.com/handpoem.html. I really liked this poem and decided that it would be really good for Jared, especially since he has been helping clean our apartment and has noticed how much of a mess our little girl can make, especially all of her handprints on his computer. I was thinking I would just do the poem and handprints but then decided that I wanted to make it a little more personal for the year and age and so I wanted to somehow add a picture of Velocity and Jared without making it look too cheesy and crowded. Well on one of my late nights where I couldn't turn off my mind and go to sleep it hit me! I could take on of the pictures that I love of them and lighten it and then put the poem on top of the picture. I would then print it out as a 5x7 and paste it on a piece of 8x10 white cardstock and add the handprints. I would then frame it and put it with a goody basket.

So I found a couple of pictures that I liked and edited them and put the poem on top of them. I then decided which one I liked the most and sent it to walmart to have it printed out. After having it printed out I picked it and the supplies for the goody basket up and put it all together. I got a cheap stamp pad from the dollar tree along with a nice looking black frame. I then pasted the photo on the cardstock and had Velocity handprint it. I really like how it turned out.

Here is the final of the picture

And the gift basket

We also got Velocity a cute "I <3 my dad"

and daddy even shared!

I also had Velocity take the picture to Jared instead of putting it with the gift basket.

2 Year Anniversary

June 15th 2013 marked 2 years of marriage for Jared and I. These last 2 years have been wonderful and I wanted to do something special for Jared to celebrate the day and our time together.

Jared has been saying that he wants a camouflage tie for a while and a couple weeks ago I came across a Manti Utah tie clip and remembered that he mentioned wanting a tie clip once too. After much thought I decided to order the tie clip and either find a camouflage tie or make one.

Well ordering something online (off Amazon at that) isn't all that easy when you share accounts for both Amazon and banking and you don't want the other person to know you ordered something.. Well Amazon sends emails of the item when it is shipped and our main Amazon account is set up under Jareds email and he gets his emails sent right to his phone (electronics these days...) so using that account was sorta out of the question. Luckily I still have my account from before we were married! So after deciding to order it from my account I had to decide what to do about paying for it so he doesn't find out.. (I wasn't even going to let Jared know I ordered something so I didn't want him to see the Amazon charge..) Well I knew that I still had a few dollars on my Dixie State card and usually they let you overdraft some without a penalty as long as you pay it back in a certain time period. I figured I could use that card and then pay off the overdraft and Jared wouldn't know. Well.., after putting in the card information and submitting my order I found out that the Dixie State card doesn't let you overdraft (at all) anymore so I had to find a different way. I tried transferring more money the the card through both my account and a sponcer account (an account for say a parent of a student who just wants to add money to the students card) but both ways had a minimum of $25 to transfer, since I only needed $1.50 I didn't want to do this. After a lot of thought and trying to work around that system I saw an ad for Amazon gift cards. Through this ad I learned that I could send an electronic gift card for any amount. An electronic gift card doesn't cost an additional amount to send and is available almost instantly to the receiving end (Amazon just sends an email to the recipient, they click a link that says redeem and it applies it the their Amazon account!). I decided that I would try this so I bought a gift card for the amount that was left on my Dixie State card and applied it to my account. I then canceled the current order and started to place a new order. When in the payment method Amazon gave me a simple yes or no option on using my gift card amount. After selecting to use that it deducted the amount from my final price and updated my price. I know only had to pay $1.50. I was going to put this on our credit card (by this time Jared knew I was ordering something but didn't know what or the price) but then realized I could put it on my old bank card (I know.. I should go close that account..) that had just enough for the final price! After putting the card information in, it processed pretty quickly and my item finally (after 24 hours of trying to figure out how to get around the system) went into the shipping processes. I am happy to say that as I am writing this (6/7/2013) my item is on it's way to my doorstep!!

The next process of Jared's present was finding, or making, a camouflage tie. I was able to find ties online but they where way more than what I had to spend at the time (I found this really cool website for camouflage formal stuff at camoformal.com ). I also posted on some Facebook online yard sale sites to see if anyone had one they were wanting to sell, no luck. I figured my best luck would be to find some material to make a tie. Although walmart carries material I figured I would have to go to Joann's for the best option. Well, since Joann's is mostly just sewing stuff I didn't want this charge to appear on the card either so I had to try and talk Jared into giving me the cash he had... After much "begging" I finally got him to give me the cash and I dragged Cassidy around town while we tried to find what we needed. First we stopped by Walmart to take a quick glance at what they had and to also pick up some stuff for Jared's fathers day gift. Although Walmart had some camo material none of it was quite the design that I wanted and was all more of a cotton than a silk, so we decided to check out Tie One On to see if they just happened to have a camo tie. They did, but is was army camo and I wanted hunter camo so we moved on. We then stopped by the D.I. to see if they happened to have one and to also grab an 8x10 picture frame for Jared's fathers day present. The D.I. didn't have what we were looking for so we went to Joanns. After looking for quite a while at Joanns we finally found the small supply that they had of camo (more than Walmarts but not by much). We quickly looked through the supply and just grabbed the one that we liked the design of the most and that felt like it might work for a tie (sadly they didn't have any that was more of a silk so we still ended up getting a polyester/cotton sort of material). After getting the material we found some interfacing that will hopefully work and went on our way. Now I just have to print off the pattern from this site http://www.purlbee.com/the-purl-bee/2009/5/21/mollys-sketchbook-fathers-day-tie.html (thanks pinterest!) and sew the tie while Jared is at work.. (6/7/2013)

Turned out the tie takes a lot more time to sew than I thought... It is mostly hand sewn. And the pattern was for more of a skinny tie and it was a bit shorter than an average tie. Nevertheless.. Jared loved it!