D.I. (Literally) Y

We've lived in these new digs for a year now and our living room has always been empty. I decided to spruce it up one weekend while Marc was out of town. I'm sure that you probably don't care about all the details of how it came to pass, nor do I care to write it all. So,here are the pictures of my design on a dime.

This actually works! We have loved listening to my mom and dad's old Johnny Cash and Simon and Garfunkel records!

How do you describe this color? Heath pinned it down as "the color of infection."

Special Thanks to:

Heath, my brother in law, who was my designer and consultant through this project

Mark, my neighbor, who painted the wall for me at 10:00 p.m. Sunday night (with paint that he supplied himself!) I love the color!

Torrey, Mark's wife, for chatting with me while we watched her husband paint the wall

Mark & Torrey for donating the black rug to my cause

Ikea for making "infection colored" fabric, so I could make pillows to match the chairs

The 70's for building furniture that lasts and has given my room a total Retro Throw Back!

Concert in the Park

On Monday night we went to the Concert in the Park at the American Fork Amphitheater. The Temple Hill Symphony was performing and my friends husband is the conductor. The music was so beautiful and the weather was perfect! We had so much fun sitting on the grass and letting Griffin roll around. It was really fun to go and enjoy something that we don't normally do!

Love that face in the lower right picture! He cracks me up!

Griffin loved the music and clapped through most of it. When he wasn't clappin' he was dancin!

Pictures

Our office is treating Skye Johansen and doing trade with her for braces. I am lucky enough to have a very generous and thoughtful boss who offered part of his trade to me to get Griffin's picture taken! I was so excited! They turned out so wonderful and even though I didn't have to pay for them they are worth a mint to me! Thanks Dr. T! You are the best!

One of the reasons that I was so excited is because Griffin is such a happy baby and I was pretty sure that he was gonna grin his little heart out and this was gonna be a breeze! Boy was I wrong! This kid was not interested and just kinda stared at us like, "What. ARE. you. doing?" Skye was extremely patient but after so many pictures of a serious baby, what do you do? She sent me home and told me to come back and try again next week. So I did, and let me tell you, the second try made the first try seem like a piece of cake! He was in no mood to be dressed and undressed and posed and whistled at and sang to and so on. We only tried for a couple minutes before we could tell that clearly, it wasn't gonna work that day. So, I went back a third time and it was the magical day! Griffin was happy and awesome and we got some really great shots! I love them all, but here are a few of my favorites.

(Yes, those are supposed to be shorts)










Oh my stars I love this boy!

Proud to be an American...... Forker

Nothing like the Bank of AF pig balloon and an American Flag to make you feel patriotic, right?

Last weekend was American Fork Steel Days and I really wasn't planning on attending any of the festivities since the Lehi Round-up just about did me in. But my dear friends McKell and Michelle were running the 5k so I thought I'd join them. This is the first race that I have run since I had Griffin and it was so fun especially to be running with my friends!

Cute Girls after the Race

My brother and dad were in the parade with the mule team and wagon. My mom and I went to watch and on the way there Griff fell asleep in the carseat, but that didn't last long once the fire trucks came. Luckily my dad was at the beginning of the parade so we didn't have to hang out too long in the heat.

That's right, we left right after they drove past and I think people were annoyed. I even heard a lady say, "They're not staying to see the band?" Sorry to disrespect lady, but I saw plenty of the band when I was marching behind them with the drill team and trying to get my groove on to "Come, Come Ye Saints." Plus, I've had my fill of parades, aight!

That night Griffin and I went over to my mom and dad's to watch THE fireworks and have root beer floats. Although they started kinda late I thought that they were awesome this year! Maybe they were a little extra special to me because I could have possibly been second -hand- high from the neighbors who were smokin' doobies over the fence. Classy! Either way, it was fun!

Just look at how much fun my dad is having! There's nothing like watching fireworks in your own backyard, in your bathrobe!

Griffin got his first taste of a root beer float and he LOVED IT! I couldn't keep it coming fast enough!

Blickenstaff's

Have you been to Blickenstaff's in the Riverwoods? It is a fun new toy store filled with candy and toys of every kind.

It's a pretty unique name right, not one you hear everyday. Well my mom is Cathie Irene Blickenstaff and two of my cousins opened up the store and manage it.

Last weekend my dad took Griffin and I down to the store for the first time. It was also Grandma Blick's first time in the store and when Grandma is in town the family gathers. It was so fun to hang out with some of my uncles, aunts and cousins that I don't get to see too often.

Griffin loves my phone, so my dad bought him his own play phone. Griffin loves it... until he see's my phone and then he wants mine instead. Why would you want to suck on a phone that is made for playing with when you could slowly destroy your mom's blackberry?

Just like they say, it's fun for everyone! It was an amazing store with loads of fun things to try out! It will be so fun (and expensive) to take Griffin back when he's a little older!

Fourth. Family. Fireworks. Fun.

South Family Campout

Last weekend the South family reserved a site at the Heber Valley Camp. There are A LOT of us and the accomodations were perfect for such a big group!

It was a weekend of firsts for Griffin. When we got to camp on Friday night we headed to Legacy Lake and went for a paddle boat ride.

Griff was not enjoying the life jacket at first, but can you blame him? I mean look at him... it's like Grandma Oli at Lake Powell all over again! If anyone in my family read this they would agree but I don't think any of them do.

As you can see, when we got going he loved it! It was a fun new adventure!

Later that night we sat by the fire and roasted marshmallows and I begged Griffin to pretend to be a cuddly baby again and fall asleep in my arms. He finally did after a couple of hours and it made my whole night. Nothing better than a warm, little baby sleeping in your arms!

The next day we did the little ropes course that they have at Heber Valley. It was fun!

And this little angel just hung out with us and finally dosed off.

What better way to cool off than with a popsicle? This was Griff's first try and he wasn't too sure about how cold it was.

Nine Months Outside the Belly

Griffin in now nine months old and I really can't believe it! Time has just flown by! He is getting more tricky each day. His new favorite thing to do is to roll over on his tummy as soon as I take off his diaper and pee. He's like a little corkscrew when I put him on the changing table and he just lays there and rolls over and over again. It's pretty hilarious.

At the nine month appointment Griffin weighed 15 lbs 12 ounces and was 25 3/4 inches long. He's still holding strong to the 3rd percentile.

He hasn't figured out how to crawl yet, he just rolls around to get whatever he wants. Everyone keeps telling me to be grateful for the days before he becomes more mobile, but this baby is a fast little roller! He's the jolliest little guy and we love him so much!

Caution... brutal honesty lies ahead!

Ok so if you are from Lehi or the surrounding cities, you may have heard of a crazy little thing called the "Miniature Float Parade." If you haven't heard of it... Here's my very opinionated summary on the whole ordeal. The miniature float parade is when all the wards in Lehi waste a lot of time and money building a 8 x 10 foot float for the primary children to ride on or walk beside in the 95+ degree heat. Sounds like a good time right? Well, Marc and I were CALLED (that's right they make it a calling) to be the float committee chair people. I'm sure that you can tell from my tone that I was thrilled about this!

Since we, the South's, are really good at procrastinating we had 2 crazy, crammed weeks of non-stop floating. After almost getting a divorce we finally finished the damn thing, and then had two days of hell to make it through the two, yes you heard me TWO parades.

Ok, so the theme for the parade was "Guess What I Saw..." and we decided that we would use "Guess What I Saw On Safari".
We started with a barbie jeep and took off from there.

Then I cut out letters on the Cricut, glued them to styrofoam, Marc cut out the styrofoam with his saw and spray painted them black then I glittered all of them one by one... WASTE OF TIME!

The easiest thing that we did was rent some zebras from Modern display... Oh wait but then we had to transport them from Salt Lake.

Good thing Griffin didn't mind the company.

We had a few trials just getting to the parade route. The float platform that the city provided didn't have a trailer hitch. When we called to "the Float Lady" to find out how we were supposed to transport this little beauty we were instructed to "have someone sit in the trunk of the car and hold onto it, or have someone sit on the back of a 4-wheeler and hold on to it and just drive real slow." Yep that's right, we live in LEHI! So, on our first attempt the welding on the pull broke and I was sitting on the back of the float holding onto a zebra as we went careening into the curb. It was hilarious. I didn't know what to do except to hold on to that zebra. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of that little diddy, but I did get a picture the next day when we were losing the tree and Marc had to do some emergency, roadside repair.
When we finally got there it was evident that we had no clue what we were doing. Some of these Lehites have been doing this for years and they really know their stuff. There were several floats that were darling! I have no desire to be one of them, so our mediocre float was good enough for me.

Thanks to Dan at Alexanders for donating this banner to us!

Our little primary kids wore safari hats and binoculars and some of the younger ones wore animal hats. They were cute.

The tree was supposed to look like it had binoculars with huge eyeballs coming out of it, but it kind of just ended up looking like short circuit...

After all was said and done we still know that the church is true even though our testimonies waivered there for a minute. Ok, well Negative Nancy is signing off now. Sorry for my brutal honesty. I guess I just wanted to document this so that when I look back I'll remember why I didn't post anything else, because we were working on this dumb float. Ok, for real Nancy, get out of here!

How cute is Griffin in this jeep?!