She's at it again

This week I finally decided to paint something. When we moved into our house, we painted all of the walls two-tone white and more boring whiter white. I figured that I would soon paint the rooms different, exciting, beautiful colors. That was five years ago or more. We did paint Arden's room before she was born, but the rest of our house is still white with boring whiter white trim. So, I decided to start trying this paint thing out on my bathroom, since if it turns out looking horrible, hardly anyone (except me and Preston) will see it.

I chose a oceany-blue color and Preston and I painted one night. It looked pretty good, but it needed some touch-ups, so yesterday while Arden was taking her nap Preston found the old white paint for me and I tried to cover up some of the oopses we made. The bathroom was looking pretty good, and I was getting all excited to go and get some shelves to put up on the wall.

Later that night, I put Arden to sleep. I waited outside her door until I was pretty sure she was asleep, then ran off to the basement to run on the treadmill while Preston listened to the monitor for Arden. While I was running, the phone rang and woke Arden up. Preston laid her back down, and was happily typing on his computer when he heard her coming down the stairs. She is getting pretty sneaky and can open the door of her room pretty quietly. He looked over and said "Arden, you're supposed to be in-OOOH NOOOO!" Arden's hands and arms were covered in white paint up to her elbows. She had paint on her clothes, and paint dripping from her hair. Preston yelled for me to come upstairs and get Arden while he hurried to start the clean-up.

I grabbed Arden and walked up the stairs, afraid of what I would find. There were little paint drops all down the stairs and the hallway, leading to the bigger mess was in the bathroom. There was paint on the tile floor, paint on the bathroom rug, paint on the shower, paint on the toilet and paint on the cabinets. Arden helpfully told me she was "Hepping paint!" I threw my little helper into the tub and washed her off first, then put her back in bed while Preston started on the carpets. I think we got the paint mostly out of the carpet, and the cabinets came clean too. The shower and toilet took some time, but they are ok now. The tile and the bathroom rug are another story. I think the rug is a total loss, and after much much scraping, the tiles themselves look pretty good, but the grout (it was dark brown) is now more of a zebra-stripe thing :). We didn't take a picture of Arden with paint on her, we were in too much of a hurry to try and stop the paint from getting in her eyes, but Preston took a picture of the bathroom floor. However, he left today on another business trip and I can't find the cable to get the picture from the camera and onto my computer, so you will all just have to visualize. :)

Anyway, if anyone has any good ideas about how to get white paint off of dark brown grout, please let me know.

If you don't have any good ideas about grout leave me a comment anyway, I love to get comments. Love love love. Even if you don't have anything to say, just type in "hi!" so I know that someone is out there reading this stuff.

Happy Easter (a day late)

HAPPY EASTER!!

I know I am a dork, but Arden thought it was funny. Anyway, I hope everyone had a great Easter! Arden and I made it through another week of Preston being out of town last week, and we were both so happy when he got home last Thursday night! Yaaay! He brought us prizes from New York, and we both love to get prizes. He is home with us this week so we will enjoy him while we can before he heads off to Philadelphia next week :(.

We had a busy but fun Easter weekend. On Saturday morning, after Preston let me sleep in a little and get some exercise (I am trying to get into swimsuit shape for our trip to Grand Cayman in April!!), we headed off to Easter Egg Hunt #1 at a park in our town. It was one of those where the eggs are just on the grass in a big field, so it is more of an "Easter Egg Run" than a hunt. Arden figured out what to do pretty quickly (with a lot of help from Dad), but all the eggs were gone in less than a minute. She was really surprised and happy to figure out that there were treats inside! Wow! Here is Arden doing her thing:

We headed home after that and attempted to color some eggs. Arden liked to stick stickers on them, and she only broke one or two. Here is Arden and Dada working hard on the eggs:

After a nap (or at least an attempt at a nap), we headed over to Preston's parents' house for another Easter egg hunt! Arden knew what she was doing this time, but Preston was still more than willing to help! She found quite a few eggs and put them in her purse (I know, I know, we didn't have a basket for her to use yet and she really loves her little purse, so we let her keep her eggs in that). She knew exactly what to do this time! As soon as the hunt was over, she was trying her hardest to open up some of those eggs. Good thing she wasn't very good at it! We headed inside and had a yummy Easter dinner and had a great time playing with the cousins.
The next morning we got up and got ready for church. Arden found her Easter basket that the Easter Bunny had left for her. She was so excited to see all of the treats. (Next year, someone remind me of how many treats she is going to get in the egg hunts so I will remember not to get any for her basket! So much for getting into swim-suit shape! I can't resist Cadbury eggs! Oh well.) We were off to church with a sugared-up Arden. Here she is in her pretty Easter dress.

She jumped up and down and waved her arms all through Sacrament, but she did it quietly :). Arden looooves go to go her nursery class at church. She got yet another egg at nursery, and as soon as I went in the room to get her, she ran up to me yelling "OOWEN IT! OOWEN IT!"

That evening we headed over to my parents' house, for Egg Hunt #3. Arden is the only in-state grandchild on my side of the family, so we let her have a head start before the "adults" (and I use this term loosely) all ran out and found the rest of the eggs ourselves! Thankfully, I don't have any photographic evidence of that, but I think my mom has some to blackmail us all with. After the hunt, we had another yummy dinner, ate our candy, and happily rolled ourselves home.

On a side note, it is finally warm enough for Arden to practice riding her "bike" outside! She is still not very good at it, but here she is giving it her best!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Happy St. Patrick's Day to YOU!!!

Hope you are all having a good one. Preston is out of town again, so Arden and I have been spending a pretty low-key St. Patrick's Day at home today. Now that the snow is melted, Arden can't get enough of being outside. We spent a lot of the morning outside playing around the yard, drawing pictures on the sidewalk with chalk, and trying not to step in deer poo, even though it was only about 40 degrees outside. It was sunny, and felt warm to us. Arden's favorite game lately is "chase you." (This really means chase ME, she gets her "you"s and "me"s mixed up. She is always asking me to "hold you" when she wants me to pick her up). Anyway, we had fun running around, and can't wait for it to warm up even more!

Does anyone do anything fun for St. Patrick's Day? My mom used to really get into it when I was little. I remember one St. Patrick's Day when I was in elementary school, my mom was being creative and packed me a "green" lunch. I had green kool-aid in my thermos, a green apple, etc. I bit into my tuna sandwich, and saw with horror that she had even put green food coloring in with the tuna. The tuna was bright green! I got really grossed out by that and couldn't eat the rest of my sandwich. I still can't eat tuna to this very day. So, have fun out there on St. Patrick's Day, but don't go too crazy. :) (I love you, mom!)

The Cast Is Off!

HOOORRRAAAAY! Arden got her cast off today!!!!!She went to the doctors where they took some more x-rays of her elbow. The bone was completely healed, so she got to have her cast removed! She is doing great, and the doctor was impressed with how well she was moving her arm right after the cast was removed! Looking at her arm now, you would never know it was ever broken, her skin looked fine after we put a little lotion on it. Arden really didn't mind her cast much while it was on, but I am sure she is glad to have it off. I know I am!

Party! Party! Party!

Last Sunday was Arden's second birthday party. We tried to keep in small and only invited our families, but since Preston comes from a family of eight brothers and sisters, even a a "small family party" can feel pretty big. I did a really bad job of taking pictures that day. Hopefully I can get some good ones from my mom, but I will post a couple here.Arden had a great time eating pizza, salad and chips. After everyone was done eating, we brought out an Elmo pinata. I thought Arden would like it, since she likes Elmo. However, it turns out that she likes him so much, she didn't really want to hit him with a stick. Also, she wasn't too thrilled when her cousins hit him with a stick either. Hmmmm...didn't think about that. Her cousins thought it was the BEST and I was suprised how hard even little two-year-0ld Grace was bashing Elmo around. During the beating, er, I mean pinata fun, I tried my best to explain to Arden how it wasn't really Elmo. I tried to tell her it was just a box full of candy that looked like Elmo, and the kids were just trying to get the candy out. It was a pretty sturdy pinata, so it took about 15 minutes of serious Elmo-smacking before he finally gave up the candy (it probably didn't help Arden feel better that her cousin Broxton knocked Elmo's head clean off). She picked up some candy and seemed ok with everything. However, when we went back in the house, she ran to my sister Amanda, and with huge eyes and flailing arms she yelled "EMMO!! EMMO!! STICK!! HIT!! OWIE!!!" Oh well. Hopefully she isn't permanently damaged. :)

The rest of the party pretty much involved opening presents and eating cake and ice cream, so of course Arden enjoyed those activities more than the pinata. She had plenty of help opening her presents:
Then, yesterday, Arden took her very first trip to Jungle Jim's. Jungle Jim's is kind of like a Chuck-E-Cheese kind of place, but with more rides. We went with some friends, and Arden loved it! Grace and Zane were old Jungle Jim pro's, so they showed Arden the ropes. They rode pretty much every ride twice. Here are some pictures of the fun day:

Then, later that night, we went to Arden's cousin's first birthday party! Arden loves playing with her cousins, so she was so excited to see them two weekends in a row. We all had a great time eating more cake and ice cream and watching the Jazz game (Go Jazz!). Fun week!

Happy Birthday Arden!

Arden is TWO YEARS OLD! I can hardly believe it. In some ways, it seems like we just brought her home from the hospital, but in other ways I can hardly remember my life before she came. It has been so fun watching her grow up for these past two years. She is my whole world. Happy Birthday Arden! I love you!

Here is a slide show of our "bunny pictures." We have taken lots of pictures of Arden next to her stuffed bunny toy. You can watch her grow by comparing how big she is in the pictures with how big the bunny is (just click the "X" in the upper right hand corner of the video box to make it smaller so you can read the captions better). Enjoy!