Journal Writing

I've decided this blog is a lot like my journal.. first I'm stoked about it and write once a week...for about two weeks...then it becomes once every two weeks, then once a month, then here we are at three months in between postings. To make it even better, I tell myself all the time that I'm just going to start posting every Sunday and make it like my journal. Then Sunday comes and goes and...........nothing. Bummer deal. haha.. so I've decided to look through some pictures from the last three months and post about whatever I have pictures of. Fun!
So I'm starting in April. My last post was April 3. April 4 was the next day, which was my birthday!! This year I turned 22. I do have to admit something though. When I was a kid, I distinctly remember being with my mom at the doctor's office or something and a receptionist was asking how old my mom was and mom kept saying she was, like, 32 when she was actually 33 or something. The receptionist kept asking and my mom kept giving the wrong age. As a kid I just thought it was so funny that anyone could forget how old they were, because birthdays are always such a big deal. Well, guess what? I am only 22, and for some reason this year I have had the hardest time remembering if I turned 21 this year, or 22, 23... and I usually end up having to subtract the year I was born with the year it is.. coming up with the result that I am now 22 years old. Isn't that dumb? Be as it may, it is true... haha. Random tangent. Anyway, I did have a good 22nd birthday. It was actually general conference, so we spent most of the day watching conference.
That night between sessions we went out to dinner. My mom's birthday is actually the day before mine, so we went to dinner with my parents to none other than both my mom's and my FAVORITE restaurant EVER, Olive Garden. Yum. It makes my tummy growl just thinking about it. After dinner, all the boys went to the Priesthood session, and my mom and I went out and bought our cake.
We have this tradition where every year we go out and buy ourselves an ice-cream cake (mostly since our boys aren't really "bakers", and birthday cakes are especially not really their specialty) and we are allowed to eat as much of it as we want. This year's flavor was banana cream. It was divine.
Adalynn is growing up soooooooooooooooo fast. I'm wondering where my little baby went. One of her favorite things to do when we're at grandma's house is to watch her "movie". Her movie is my mom's digital picture frame.

She LOVES the pictures that have babies or small kids in it. She gets excited and will talk to the cute babies (or shout, rather), and then she'll watch patiently while the "commercials" play (a.k.a. pictures with no babies in them and just boring adults). It's so funny.

So now I'm moving into the "finished projects" stage of this post. Remember that post I did forever ago about the huge remodeling project Jackson and I had undertaken? Well, it is finished! (mostly, at least) Jackson did 98% of the work, and I mostly "supervised," which is a nice way of saying I basically helped with the demolition and that's about it. He did such a great job. Here are some finished product photos.



Nice, eh? While he was busy with his manly man construction business, I was working on a project of my own: a girly homemakery project of making Adalynn a matching bedset. I had really wanted one of these for her for a long time, but the least expensive ones I could find that I even sort of liked was at least 75 bucks! I said no way, Jose (pronounced "hoe-zae"). So I made my own. It was actually like a bajillion times easier than that dress I made Addy. It was fun. Oh, and I only spent $32 for EVERYTHING. I love thriftyness. You can judge for yourself if the finished product is worth $32 and a beginner seamstress. Personally, I think it rocks!



I made a matching crib skirt, bumpers, quilt, and curtains! Yea for hobbies!

Oh, yes, change of subject, while I was scrolling through these pictures of mine, guess what evidence I came across that I almost forgot to let the world know about? Evidence of almost vandalism. That's right, ladies and gentlemen, almost vandalism. Here's the dealeo: One day Jackson and I were inside minding our own business, just a normal night for the Fish family when all of the sudden what do we hear? A knock at the door! We open the door, and much to our surprise, here's what we find:

P.s. the roll of toilet paper says "Gotcha," just in case you can't read it... Jackson said that we got toilet papered! Really? This hasn't even happened to me since high school! Odd. I look up and our little teeny tree in the front yard is toilet papered. Observe:
I think, oh, that's cute, they just got our little tree, and, look! M&Ms! Cute. But the story does not end there, oh, no, no, no. Out of the corner of my eye I see a little flap of white flapping on the boat. Guess what? The boat's been hit! We follow the white toilet paper trial to the backyard where we find that our two very large apple trees as well as the clothes line and various other parts of the house are now decorated in white. Drats!! Right under our noses!!

So who would be capable of such an almost heinous almost crime of almost vandalism? Luckily for us, I am an almost pro-detective/ninja, and so the case has been almost solved. Good job, Mike and Kaci Watkins in your black ninja outfits, we took it all to be in good fun. Oh, and the M&Ms were good.

So that takes us through April. May is next. Really I have very few pictures from May, and they are all pretty much dealing with Trevor coming home. Trevor, my brother, has spent the last two years serving an LDS mission in the Moscow West Russia mission. He came home May 29. It was so fun! We are only 13 months apart, so we were pretty close growing up, and so it was so fun that he was going to be around again! He flew in to the Salt Lake Airport. He could have flown in to the Idaho Falls Airport, but the little hang-up is he would have had to spend the night in SLC in the airport and then fly to IF in the morning. That seemed a little silly, so we drove down to Salt Lake to go pick him up. I went with my parents and my older siblings. We had a lot of fun reminiscing and chatting on the way down.
The only downside of the trip was when we got to the Salt Lake Airport and there was a surprise waiting for us...apparently when you go to the airport to pick up a missionary, you're supposed to bring balloons, banners, creative "welcome home" dilleos and the works. Surprise! We missed the memo. So we got there and thought, uh oh, how is he going to even know we're here to pick him up? So I made a sign that said "Elder Terrill" on the back of a piece of paper my dad had of Trevor's itinerary. There. That ought to do it.

Finally he made it. He was the last one off the plane, I swear. Okay, maybe not THE last, but at least the 3rd to last or something. It took FOREVER!! We actually were a little worried that maybe he missed his connecting flight out of New York or something. Now that would have been unfortunate! Luckily for us, he is just polite and let the rest of the plane off before him... good for him.

Yea! It's good to have him home. **Oh, and update, he's already engaged to his lovely love, Kendra. They're set to be married in August. Wow, that was fast, huh? Her ring is very pretty. Also, she is very pretty, so that is a good deal. Here is a kind of bad picture of the happy couple with her eyes closed and him stuffing his face. It's the best I've got. Don't judge me.

Now it's time for the main event....Adalynn's birthday!!!! On June 16 Adalynn turned a year old! We, of course, had a party for her. We tried to keep it simple and we just had a BBQ at our house. Thanks to all my couponing, it didn't even cost us very much money! I made the cake, and, okay, here's the deal. I was trying to be creative. That was the first bad step. Anytime I try to be creative or crafty, it usually doesn't work out so hot.. haha.. anyway, I was trying to do this "ABC block cake" idea...which kind of turned out, with a few exceptions: The chocolate cake kept falling apart/just crumbling and it became a chocolate/oreo cake (since it looked more oreo-ish); and, two, the cakes didn't really turn out like "blocks" per se... more like a couple of taller than usual cakes or something...haha oh, well. At least it's the thought that counts.. right? I also made Adalynn a little mini cake for her to eat all by herself, frosting and all.


Jackson did great at grilling the burgers and everything. He's a handsome chap, don't ya think? (It's kind of a rhetorical question. You don't have to answer out loud that the answer is yes.)

And here's our birthday girl! She got some awesome presents including some cute outfits that even came with....wait for it.... hats! She LOVED the hats she got. She especially likes taking them off of her head when we try to put them on...haha..


Adalynn also got a lot of books, which she LOVES, and fun toys! She definitely got spoiled this year! Thanks so much to everyone!

Of course we have to include pictures of the cake-eating contest between Adalynn and...herself... Adalynn was so funny. At first she would take these dainty little bites and not really making a mess, and then....she must have tasted the frosting. She dug in!! Addy would grab full fistfuls of cake and frosting and just get as much as she could in her mouth at one time and then go for another bite. And another. And another. She ate and ate and ate and ate and ate and ate until you could tell she was soooooooo full, but she must have loved the cake because she would keep grabbing more like she had to keep eating. FINALLY, after much of her cake was devoured, she flipped her plate upside down as if to say get this out of my sight so I can quit eating! She's a cutie.


What a fun age Adalynn's at. It would be nice if we could make a trip to Arizona soon so that the rest of the family can see her too. We're thinking we may have time in August (gag) when it's super-duper hot. Fun! We'll see. But that's all I have for now! Congratulations on making it (if you did) to the end of this long, yet fascinating :), post!