What a Guy!

This semester has been extremely busy for Tyler. He's had to juggle school, work, and church, plus a cranky wife and baby. In addition to his always busy school schedule, he's had his senior project to work on all semester. He finished his portion and presented it at the end of March, but he's still been putting time in to help the other students he worked on it with to finish theirs. He just got released as Elders Quorum President (before that he was Executive Secretary), but that kept him very busy as well. With all that, he's had to try and squeeze 20 hours of work in every week. I seriously don't know how he does it! He is amazing. He's tried to work on homework at home just so he can see more of Ada and me, even though I'm sure he would be much more productive doing it at school. I have to say that he is doing a fantastic job. Electrical Engineering is one of the toughest and most time-consuming undergraduate programs. Most students have to retake at least one class, but he hasn't had to retake any. In fact, he has maintained a 3.5 gpa, a difficult feat for any student, let alone one with a wife & child at home who has to work. Although this semester isn't over yet and he still has another year of school before he'll have his masters, I'm extremely proud of him. I probably don't make things any easier on him by wishing he was around more, but he has done a great job of balancing everything. Even though he'll be working full-time this summer, I hope he can get some time to relax. He deserves it. He's amazing and I'm so lucky to have him!

You Come Push It

This is currently my favorite commercial. Something about the last two sentences just makes me laugh out loud every time I see it.

Spend-Free April Update

Another week down, and just over a week to go. It's been a good, albeit difficult, week. It's been hard to stay home in order to conserve gas. I walked to the grocery store this week to use my WIC vouchers. I couldn't purchase any special ingredients for a fancy dessert for my book club meeting that I hosted, so I served cookie bars. Last night we went to the Olive Garden, and alas, our first money was spent. It was not spend at the restaurant, however, since we had $40 in gift cards, but on the way to the restaurant. We had to fork over $0.75 (hey, we live on the east bench) to fill one of our tires with air. It was very low and we probably should have gotten new tires months ago, but we just keep putting it off. Anyway, it was good to go out to eat and feel guilt-free (besides the amount of food we consumed). We'll see how this week fares. Be sure to check Tyler's blog next week for an update.

Ada's Age

If you haven't noticed, I put this graphic on the bottom of my blog showing how old Ada is. Here it is again in case you missed it, but it will always be down there. It will go until she's a year old, but I will be sure to add a new one so that everyone will know her age down to the day.

Zachary Taylor

Nobody but probably my brother and dad will appreciate this, but Tyler and I saw this clip on The Colbert Report and we thought it was funny. For some reason my dad and brother have always found it extremely humorous that Zachary Taylor gorged himself with iced milk and cherries to the point of his death.

Video: Zachary Taylor

FINALLY!!

I know I already blogged today, but something momentous has happened since. Ada can crawl! For probably close to two months she's been close and we thought it would happen any day. She would "army crawl" or scoot on her belly to get something she wanted, and then she would do it all over the apartment. We finally started thinking maybe that was her way of crawling, but today she did it! I went outside, set her on the grass, and held out my cell phone and she crawled right to it! After letting her do it outside for a while I brought her in and she can crawl on the carpet too (she's always been closer to crawling on grass than anywhere else). She's pretty slow and mechanical about it, but I'm sure she'll learn to perfect it soon. Hopefully she'll be happier now that she can get around a little bit easier. Just our luck, though... we left our cameras up in Layton last night. I guess her film debut will have to be put on hold for a few days.

More Ear Woes

So it's only been one day since I posted that we've been doing well at the no spending money thing, and what do ya know-- I had to spend $35 today. Ada woke up several times in the night again, so I had to take her to the doctor this morning. She has been fussy lately and we had trouble getting her to take a nap yesterday. Poor Ada has another ear infection! So she has to take more antibiotics (the strong kind that give her diarrhea and a diaper rash). At least we caught it early. But I'm pretty sure that this falls under the category of either 'necessities' or 'emergencies', so we're still well on our way to reaching our goal. I just feel bad for my poor little princess.

Spend-Free April Update

I'm sure that everybody who reads my blog also reads Tyler's, so I'm sure if you're reading this you know that we are trying to go a whole month without spending any money (except to pay our bills). After a whole week, things are looking good. No little slip-ups. No complete meltdowns. We're still in contention to meet our goal. Our main fear right now is that our cars will run out of gas before the month is finished. Tyler is going to borrow his dad's bike just in case. We're going to do everything we can to do this. Most people we've told have found it completely inconceivable. But we're usually not big spenders anyway, so it hasn't been too tough so far. And I've still been able to get out of the house and do fun things. I went to the zoo one day, courtesy of my sister-in-law Korrin, I went SHOPPING in Park City but didn't pull out the wallet once (my mom did make a few purchases to save for my birthday), I went to the temple, and we've hung out with family. As long as the weather stays nice, I can go out and play with Ada to get out of the house. I'm sure that unless something drastic happens that's beyond our control, we'll certainly be able to attain our goal.

The Mother of all Fruit Snacks

My sister Abby discovered a delightful surprise the other day at my parents' house. My mom purchased a large box of fruit snacks from Sam's Club and Abby reached in for a packet. What she pulled out was something quite unexpected. It was a tube-like package that was chock full. As the picture indicates, it was three packets that hadn't been cut, but there were definitely more than three packets' worth of fruit snacks inside. We weighed it and it was more than half of a pound. It was so hilarious! Tyler and I took it home. We were hesitant to open it, but finally gave in and counted 98 fruit snacks inside. Jackpot! That's probably more than you get in a whole box from the grocery store. I couldn't resist documenting this remarkable find.