Monday confessional - I need a do-over

This morning will not go down as one of my finer moments in brain-power history.

I blame it on a very sleep-deprived night of only 2 hours of sleep thanks to a little something I like to call heartburn, mixed with an ill-advised 3-hour-long Sunday afternoon nap. Blah.

Anyway, when Russ woke up to leave for work at 4:30 am I was wide awake to hear the news that his car battery was dead and he had to take my Pilot. Fine, no problem, I said. Then I promptly forgot all about it and finally managed to sleep for a couple of hours. My Mum came to pick up the kids for school as usual as Mondays are her swim day at the pool so it wasn't until I walked out the door at 9 am all ready for prayer group that I noticed my missing car and remembered where it was.

At this point I should have just walked back inside and climbed straight back into bed, except that I lead this particular prayer group, so I called my sister who works 3 minutes away from my house, and she kindly came and got me, drove back to work so I could drop her off, and let me take her car.

Next I drove to her empty house, where the prayer group actually meets, and it was when I pulled into the driveway that I realized my key to get IN her house was on my Pilot key chain... which was with Russ at his work.

Darn it!! Why hadn't I just climbed back in bed again?

So now I had to sit in the driveway to wait to see if anyone was going to show up (at which point I'd tell them I had to cancel) and I actually thanked the Lord when no one did (we're a small group so it happens sometimes.) After half an hour I abandoned ship and called my sister to laughingly admit my goof up. Her reply?

"Oh you could have got in my house, you had my garage door opener and could have just gone through the laundry room!"

Of course I could have. Why didn't I think of that? (among other things...)

Because my brain is running on fumes, folks. Pure fumes.

late night Friday photo dump

Last Friday at the Oregon zoo with friends Dylan and Emily. It was a great day!

After the zoo I was honored to be invited out with these lovely ladies to celebrate our friend Tracy's birthday. 

Olive Garden and Divergent at the movie theaters. (really good!)

Saturday morning project: finally putting up the wall decal Kendall got for Christmas! 

It turned out super cute, even though you can't see the stems on the white dandelions in the picture.

And Saturday afternoon we went to a big family birthday party for Russ's grandma who turned 80 this month. This is just the family of one of her five children (my father-in-law, Gary) so I'm sure you can imagine what a big party it was! And we were even missing two of our clan!

March Madness is consuming the boys in my household right now. 

Cooper has his own bracket and isn't doing too bad!

And speaking of Cooper - Sunday was his 11th birthday. Instead of a "party" he invited two friends (his cousins Mark & Drew) over after church to watch March Madness, go birthday shopping with him, rent movies and get pizza for dinner, stay the night, and go swimming the next day! And thus began a 29 hour marathon of rowdy boy mayhem!

This required caffeine of course ;)

The swimming crew after two hours of pool fun. I finally wore them all out!

Blake decided to get all his favorite fixings out for me to make him a sandwich.

Yes, this included pickle relish and his beloved hot sauce. He swears he loved it! (Odd child.)

And this is where I am today (and the reason for the late post) - 33 hours of scrapbook madness began at 9 am Friday morning and will go until 6 pm Saturday night. We have our biggest group attending yet (70 ladies), from 3 different states, and so far it's been AWESOME!

And I'm loving time with these girls :)

Now back to scrapping!

Have a great weekend!

Awkward and Awesome Thursday

Awkward:
- Sitting in the parking lot of the store you ran to "real quick" to pick up a missing dinner ingredient and getting sucked into the audiobook you had playing on your phone while you drove there, until next thing you know 20 minutes have passed and you've yet to enter the store. OOPS!
- The 3 minutes I just spent trying to highlight and delete a rogue dash in this blog post, only to discover it was a piece of lint on my screen. EMBARRASSING.
- posting yesterday's "what I wore wednesday" post a whole day early and not even realizing I was off a day until someone else told me so.
- noticing the photo bomber in this lovely picture I took of Russ's Grandma, who celebrated her 80th birthday this past weekend.

 Hahaha!

Awesome:
- cousins who are your kid's best friends

- and who don't mind being total goobs together ;)

- new deck progress

- and hard working husbands that can build them on their own.

- re-watching Ghost for the first time in probably 10 years... yep, still love it!
- being only 1 day away from our Spring Scrap Around the Clock - which is going to be bigger and better than ever this year! Lots of planning and hard work have gone into it and I can't wait to spend all day Friday and Saturday with a whole bunch of awesome ladies doing what we do best! (or maybe just what we like to do best ;)

Monday confessional: taking the permanent makeup plunge

Yep. I had my eyebrows tattooed!

Remember this post from January where I was hemming and hawing over what to do about my negligent eyebrow hair situation?

If you don't want to click on the link, here's a picture which really needs no explanation:

YIKES.

After some encouraging feedback, I decided to go for it but had to impatiently wait for an online coupon deal to pop up for the place I wanted to go to (recommended by a friend and with excellent online reviews). Once one finally became available in February I called and made an appointment for the same day! (When I'm ready to do something I am READY!) Then I called my sister-in-law, Tricia, and asked her if she wanted to go on an adventure with me :) Tricia is always ready for Jodi-adventures... And like that we were off!

This was the proposed timeline of the appointment as explained by Lindsay, my permanent makeup artist:
- 10 minutes or so to discuss what I want
- 30 minutes to draw them on, adjust as needed, and make sure they're exactly what I want
- 20 minutes to let the numbing gel work
- An hour and 15 minutes approx to do the tattooing
- 5 minutes wait time before leaving.

I made my appointment for 5 pm on Monday, February 10th so there would be no customers after me and figured I'd be out of there by 7:30 pm.

HA.

Apparently I am very opinionated/indecisive about eyebrow shapes because when it hit 7 pm and I was still nitpicking the drawn on version, poor Lindsay basically told me I needed to either get down to business or come back another day.

I almost didn't do it! I'd driven an hour to get there though and truthfully, felt guilty that I'd already wasted two hours of her time, so I squashed my nerves and blurted, "I'm ready". (And then I squeezed my eyes shut and prayed it wouldn't be a disaster while my stomach twisted into a nervous knot.)

And here's one more picture to show you how silly I looked beforehand.

The process: Above you can see the drawn on brows, with an upwards dash at the outer corner to clearly mark the stopping point. The numbing gel worked awesome... the first time over with the tattoo gun. But she had to go back over each brow over and over again, and once that numbing gel was worn off... HOOEY, it hurt! Especially the closer to my nose she got.

After two or three times over she'd numb my brow again and go to the other side, which gave me some much needed relief. In my opinion it was nothing like a regular tattoo (I have a small one on my shoulder blade and it only took 10 minutes!) Permanent makeup is really only semi-permanent (lasting years but not a lifetime) so the process is apparently different. And I was a bit of an extra bleeder so that meant she had to go deeper and over it more times too. All in all it took almost two hours - partly because Lindsay was such a perfectionist! (Something I was very grateful for.)

We finally left at 10 pm, five hours after I'd arrived! I'm smiling in the above pics but seriously, I was in shock. And thus began an hour long freak-out session while Tricia and I drove home. I can tell you though, Tricia was magnificent, the best moral support I could have asked for! By the time we got back home she'd halfway convinced me I hadn't made a giant mistake ;)

Swollen and red but not quite as freaky looking as I was first thinking. After 6-8 weeks permanent makeup fades about 40% and thins by about 30%, so the initial result is quite drastic compared to the final appearance.

Now, I shared one picture on instagram afterwards but I didn't want to write about it here until my eyebrows were all healed up so I could show you a progression of pictures... because that's the fun part!

My first time going out in public.

Celebrating Valentine's. Starting to peel.

Starting to lighten up a bit. Still peeling.

Thinner and lighter.

So you may be wondering, how do I feel about my eyebrows now? 

I love them! I am so happy I did it and can't tell you how much time it saves me not to have to draw my eyebrows on everyday! I am also way less self-conscious than I was before and that alone has made it worth it to me. 

Because I had so little hair to begin with the brushstroke technique was not an option for me (it would turn out looking like zebra stripes). This meant I had to get solid eyebrows, which are not quite as natural looking. I've decided it's infinitely better than what I had though and LOVE the shape. Seriously, so much better than what I was drawing on daily!

Cost: I paid $200 thanks to an online deal (regular price $450) and don't need any touch-up work so I won't need to pay anything else. Yay!

Funny side story: The insides slope down towards my nose more steeply than my old brow shape so for the first couple of weeks Russell kept asking me if something was wrong and if I was upset with him. We figured out it was just my new eyebrows so we started calling them my "angry bird" brows... which for some reason really cracked us both up :)

So that's it! Have any questions? Shoot away!

Friday photo dump

It's Friday, but more importantly, it's the first day of Spring Break! Weeeeeee!

You know what this means: SLEEPING IN. It's my only Spring Break goal. Well, that and getting rid of at least half of the belongings in my boys' room. I've been threatening a Mom-controlled dung-out for weeks now and OH, IT IS HAPPENING.

Nothing will be sacred. NOTHING!

But back to sleeping in. The daylight savings time change hit me hard this year and what was really only an hour earlier wake-up time felt like three hours earlier. For at least a week. So I'm really looking forward to a little catch-up. So much so that when Jana asked me two days ago if I wanted to take the kids to the zoo today, my first question was: "what time would we be leaving?"

Thankfully, because Jana and I run on the same thought wavelength at all times, we aren't leaving until the blessed hour of 10:30 am. Yay, Zoo Day!

Wait. What am I here for again? Oh yes, the Friday photo dump...

^^Christine, Tricia, Michelle, Sam, Kelly, Shay, me, and Jana^^

Last weekend I joined the world of cool urban hipsters and attended my first painting session at Vine Gogh, an artist bar & studio. We were celebrating my sister's birthday and I'll tell you right now, this is a totally legit way to have the best girls night of your life. We ate out at Sweet Tomatoes first and ended our night with dessert at the Cheesecake Factory, and what more could you ask for? 

The instructor stood on a stage with a mic and painted/instructed as we followed along. Or tried to follow along. Let's just say I bequeathed my finished canvas to my daughter's bedroom wall. I want to go again soon though, it was really fun!

This poor darlin' came down with the stomach bug Monday night. I hung with her on the couch to kept her company, and also to encourage her not to waste any time in rushing to the bathroom when necessary. Puke cleanup is not my favorite. After a day home to recover on Tuesday she was back to normal and thankfully no one else has succumbed. Hallelujah. 

And now I present to you: the world's tiniest dog, which I saw in the McDonald's drive-thru line, because yes, sometimes I go to McDonald's just for their french fries (when I'm alone and there's no one to judge me/share with). This teeny-tiny thing was literally half the size of the door handle. 

Besides the sicky on the couch Monday night, this week was a most excellent week for two reasons: We had real spring weather, and Russell started our front deck project! I love project season! (otherwise known as the few months between basketball season and hunting season. Amen.)

In workout related news, Kristie and I tried out the Focus T25 program by Beachbody and didn't actually die. Sure, we felt like it at one point most of the way through, but we did it! High fives and lots of panting all around. (Kristie is my faithful workout buddy who meets with me twice a week. I love her.)

Kendall's Jamberried nails. She got this set for Christmas and since it's nearing April I decided I'd man up and give it a go. Well lo and behold, I didn't do half bad! Those things take a science, man. 

Next Monday I'll be sharing something I've been holding off on writing about for six long weeks... it's taken massive amounts of self-restraint and I'm excited to talk all about it! Until then, happy weekend!

(Perhaps I should preface that it has nothing to do with being pregnant. I'm not! Just thought I'd throw that out there ;)

6 for 6 - a progressive party

Want to know a great last-minute birthday party idea for your 6-year-old that you didn't plan a party for until the day of his actual birthday?

(Or just a great birthday party idea in general for all you regular non-procrastinating, got-it-together people out there?)

Throw together an easy progressive party! Because Blake turned six I called it his "6 for 6 party". Six surprise stops to celebrate his 6th birthday.

Stop One:

Blake got to pick two friends to join our family on his surprise birthday adventure. His cousin Hayden started out with us from our house so stop #1 was picking up Blake's friend Chase and opening his present from her. Then we were off again!

Stop Two:

We pulled into Auntie Cara's house next and Blake got to open his present from his cousins and get hugs from everyone. Didn't take longer than 10 minutes. 

Stop Three: 

It's the movie theaters!

We saw Mr. Peabody and Sherman and ate our weight in theater popcorn. (Please excuse my violent appearing older son... him and Hayden thought they were hilarious with this pose. Boys.) 

Stop Four: 

Grandma and Grandpa Halverson's house for pizza and soda and another present! Plus little birthday treats for all the kids. We stayed for probably half an hour, gave goodbye hugs, and were off again...

(pizzas I picked up from Papa Murphy's earlier in the day and left in my mother-in-law's fridge so she could have them ready for us.) 

Stop Five: 

Grandma and Papa Wilson's house for cake and ice cream, goodie bags, and a couple more presents! Plus a special visit from Grandma Tracy - which elicited extra excitement.

(I also made the cake and brought it over with the strawberries and ice cream and treat bags earlier in the day.)

Stop Six: 

And the last stop was when we dropped Hayden off at home. We all went inside so Blake could open his present from Uncle Dave and Aunt Kelly. They got him a couple of cool basketball tees but the present he was most excited about was his very own hot sauce from his Uncle David! Believe it or not, it was his number one gift request (after trying it while staying with them for the weekend back in January), and boy was he excited about it! Funny kid :)

So basically we went to the movies and then drove around to family member's homes to open presents. And the kids LOVED IT! They were so excited to see what each stop would be and declared it the most fun day ever. 

While I patted myself on the back for getting out of decorating and hosting an actual party ;)

It was awesome. 

And this is a bonus pic just because it was the cutest :)

Friday photo dump

From a couple weeks ago: balloon release celebrating little Ryan's life (with his favorite color, orange.)

It was so perfect, just look at that blue sky. Glad we got to be a part. 

The tragic occurrence that happened on the way home from our trip to Baker City - that's a cracked kindle and a no-longer-working screen! Waaaaahhhh!

The day after we returned from Baker was Blake's 6th birthday and I had nothing planned, so Russ stopped at the sporting goods store and picked him up what he'd been asking for for months (new basketball clothes and shoes), I fixed him his choice for dinner (spaghetti and nachos), and then we went out for fro-yo afterwards.

It was perfect :) 

A good sign it's time to mow the yard. Spring is in full swing over here!

And this one's straight from my instagram post:

"That moment when you get your period only 24 days into your cycle and feel extra affected by the crazytown hormones... and then while driving in the sunshine you search for your old sunglasses in the car console and discover the chocolate chips you hid on last week's roadtrip and forgot about. And you're like THANK YOU GOD. #girlproblems #keepingitreal"

I'm feeling better now :)

Our driveway prettied itself up right nicely!

The birthday cake I made Blake for his little party last night - which I'll blog about next week because it was just too fun. Back to the cake though... I had 10 minutes to decorate it and no game plan after the frosting. I opened the pantry looking for inspiration, saw the bag of peanut butter chips in my baking supplies and though hey, why not? Added a few chocolate sprinkles and called it a day. Brilliant.

Have a great weekend!