Author: Faith

Optimistic or just plain stupid?

Yo Gabba Gabba Live is back in town today. Last year N and I tried to take E to the show but it was an unqualified disaster. But this time around 1) E’s a whole year older 2) we’ve talked about the show with him and he really wants to go 3) he’s been to a few movies in the theater and did well and 4) I got him some ear protectors.

This time around we only bought two tickets so N is taking him which I feel slightly jealous about but also vaguely relieved. It’s sweet how excited E is to go someone on his own with his dad.

I think it will go well. But I also thought it would go well last year so we shall see, my friends.

We shall see.

Kindle Lending Library

Amazon just launched a lending library for the Kindle. If you have an Amazon Prime membership and a Kindle you can borrow one book a month. It looks like they have a pretty good selection.

I have a Kindle but my free one-year Amazon Prime subscription through their Amazon Mom program sadly just ended. It’s only been a few weeks but I miss it already.

This lending library just might be the excuse I need to renew my membership.

14 Hours, 1400 Miles


On Saturday N and I left the house at 6 am at flew to Seattle. It felt so strange to be flying without any luggage or carry-ons. From the airport we headed straight to the funeral. It was a really lovely service and afterwards there was a lot of catching up with family and swapping funny stories about Grandpa.

After the graveside service and a quick family lunch we headed back to the airport and few back to Salt Lake. Incredibly enough we were back home in time to put E to bed.

It was a surreal day in a lot of ways but I’m so glad we went. It was very comforting to be able to pay our respects to Grandpa.

Hearing people talk about him was really inspiring. He had a lot of good qualities that I want to emulate, especially the ability to find the funny aspect of any situation. Things that would bother most people didn’t annoy him; they amused him. Whomever he spent time with left feeling better about things than they did before.

How awesome would life be if more of us were like that?

So You Think You Can Dance?” Tour


For my birthday N gave me tickets to the “So You Think You Can Dance” tour. The performance was on Wednesday night and it was AMAZING. Those kids are incredible athletes. It was a really fun night out with N and was the highlight of what has been kind of a hard week for us.

During intermission we were chatting and I asked N why so many Mormon kids are really into dance (we were seated in the middle of a big crowd wearing “Team Caitlyn” shirts). His face got that lawyer-ish look it gets when he’s getting ready to launch into a long explanation of something.

“Well,” he said. “It goes back to the 60s and 70s. There was this bishop in Lehi who was against dancing…” I interrupted him by smacking him in the arm.

He had me right up until “in Lehi.” (Ha-ha, I love this guy.)

(By the way, the mill is only 10 minutes from our house and you should check it out if you’re ever in town. The cookie, pancake, and cake mixes they sell in their gift shop are supposed to be super yummy.)

I hope you have a nice weekend. N and I are gearing up for a whirlwind visit to Seattle for his grandpa’s funeral on Saturday. We leave the house at 6am, fly to SEA, go straight to the funeral and a family lunch, and then leave for the airport to fly back to SLC. It’s going to be a crazy 14 hours.

Goodbye, Grandpa

Grandpa and E, August 2008

We just found out that N’s grandpa passed away last night.

He was a wonderful man. Until his health went downhill we would see him once or twice a year when he stayed with us to attend local genealogy conferences. We loved having him around.

My own grandfathers died before I was born so he was the only grandpa I really knew and I loved spending time with him. He was a Grandpa straight out of central casting–funny and caring but with an ornery streak and the tendency to say slightly scandalous things and the self-awareness to enjoy saying them. Every once in a great while he would drop an outdated racial epithet in a conversation but I think he mostly did it to get a rise out of us and so we would chide him, “Grandpa, you can’t say that anymore!”

Being in his company was like being plunged into an ocean of Grandpa-y-ness. It was awesome.

He was always unfailingly kind to me and went out of his way to make me feel welcome as a member of the family. I will miss his humor, his wit, his kindness, and the example he set as a man devoted to his family and the Lord. We will miss him but I know that he’s with his wife and other loved ones now. I believe that families can be forever and that I’ll see him again.

Grandpa, we love you.

Olliegraphic Custom Bowls

Last week the custom bowls I ordered for E and some of his cousins came from Olliegraphic! I love how they turned out.

They’re normally $21 a piece + shipping but I had snagged some discount vouchers at Zulily which brought them into niece-and-nephew-Christmas-present range (we have a lot of them). I still have one voucher left which I’m going to use to order Mimi a bowl, but I’m holding off until we have a better idea of what color the little baldie’s hair is going to be. 🙂

If you’re interested in ordering, there are a few things you should know. The bowls are dishwasher-safe but not microwave-safe which makes them great for cereal but bad for, um, foods you might want to microwave. The custom plates, which I assume you also can’t put in the microwave, might be more inconvenient.

Also, I found the skin tones to be a little lighter than they looked on my screen. I picked the lightest shade (“fair”) for E and the next darkest shade (“light”) for his half-Korean cousins but with them side by side I have a hard them telling the difference and while they look super cute I think the next shade darker would have been better.

All and all, I’m really happy with how the bowls turned out and can’t wait to send them to my nieces and nephew. As gifts go, they’re cute and a little out-of-the-ordinary. Since they’re custom-made it takes about 3-4 weeks to receive your order so don’t procrastinate if you’re want to give them as Christmas gifts.

Quilt Binding

This Remix fabric by Ann Kelle was a major inspiration for my zigzag quilt. There are already so many bright colors in the quilt that throwing in this fabric as the binding may be little much. But I love it so much that I couldn’t resist. More is more, right? 🙂

Since this is my first quilt, every step in construction is new (and intimidating!) to me. I took a look at a couple of tutorials online and was psyching myself up to give binding the quilt a go when my mom arrived in town last week to visit my sister Jan. She’s an expert quilter so I, um, had her help me/do it for me instead. (I know, I know…but at this point I just wanted to get it finished. But I now that I’ve seen how it’s done I am totally going to bind the next one myself.)

So the quilt is finished and I’m really happy with it. I can see all of my mistakes (of which there are many) but both of the kids love snuggling with it which was the whole point. I’ll get pictures up as soon as I can.