Scorpion hunting

We have scorpions at our house. It's no surprise, we live in old orange groves and that is just something you expect. Luckily, they stay outside and hidden during the day, but often will come out at night. Consequently, that's the best time to go scorpion hunting.

• Required items for the hunt: shoes (not flip flops, because then you are forever feeling like they are crawling on your feet. And I actually wish that I had irrigation boots for the occasion), black light, scorpion killing stick.

The other night I squished an especially giant one, and its guts squirt on to my arm! I FREAKED out. And then, I get inside and found guts on my shirt too! See those white-ish spots?! SERIOUSLY BARF.

Maybe I haven't been out hunting since then because I got all freaked out by it. Does anyone have an extra Hazmat suit laying around that I could borrow for like ever?

Anniversary Number Six!

Freak, we are getting seriously old! Sixth anniversary already? Unbelievable.

Anyway, for our anniversary, we decided that since we never see each other, we should take a little vacation and see only each other for hours and hours on end!

And since it had been two full years since we had been to Disneyland...

CALIFORNIA OR BUST!

Now we usually go to Splash Mountain first, but it was closed. I can't even tell you how sad we were!

That sadness subsided quickly when we went on Big Thunder Mountain Railroad!

Who likes my mane?

Haunted Mansion and our spooky faces.

Pirates! And Philip's dimples are my favorite. :)

As I asked the Disneyland cast member to take this picture, they said, "Are you sure you want it in front of the trash cans?" I didn't think it would be quite so noticeable...though I'm not sure what I was thinking. We went on ALL of the rides, including Autopia, which I hadn't been on since I was 4. Unfortunately, I wasn't much better now than I was then.

SPACE MOUNTAIN!

Matterhorn!

Exclamation points! Have you see the Captain EO show? Two thoughts with it: first, teenage Michael Jackson is ADORABLE! and second, thank goodness that 3D has come so far, I kind of had a headache afterwards. Guess how thrilled Philip was when I told him to pose on Tom Sawyer Island? Have I ever mentioned that we think we're hilarious? Because we really really do. And that is part of the reason that being married six years has been so freaking fantastic. Storybook Land! We also went on the big riverboat thing, where I spotted this mama and baby duck and took like a thousand pictures of them. The baby duck was just so so cute! The must have castle picture. I did have to bargain with Philip and give up a ride on the Teacups to get a redo of this picture, since the first one was fugly. Small World! DOLE WHIPS!!! Have you had the pineapple flavored soft serve icecream? I don't know how I went this long without ever having it, AMAZING! Well worth the wait in line! And a frozen banana, always a must for the Bluth family fan club. Maybe we had a really large budget for food and spent every penny, and can I say how worth it it was?! All in all, another successful trip to Disneyland and another super successful year of marriage. Six years! Really? It still blows my mind. When it boils down to it though, being his wife is the best ever.

Babies!

May was a month of babies! Or at least two that I now love and adore.

The first was Kev and Nicole's sweet little lover:

Owen Scott Jones

May 3, 2011

Can you believe how adorable this little family is? And that Nicole looks beautiful after birthing a baby and not sleeping for like 48 hours?

And of course I was immediately the favorite aunt.

Don't mind my cry-baby eyes, I might have been a teeny bit emotional and cried when I first saw him, and pretty much that entire day, just like I did when they told me they were expecting. Something about your closest brother becoming a dad just does something to ya. I am so so happy for them!

And then at the beginning of June they blessed him at church and it was delightful. Thankfully this picture is far enough away that you can't see that I cried a lot that day as well. :)

Kevin and Owen had matching ties (to die for!) and Nicole looked perfect and is the sweetest, most adoring and proud mommy. Sigh, I love this little family.

And then on the adopted aunt front, my friend Stacie had her tiny baby! Meet Graham, who loves me a lot.

We had a little bonding session over the weekend and I'm fairly certain that I am now a solid contestant in the running for being his favorite adopted aunt!

Have I mentioned that I like babies? I've been especially obsessed with them recently, which is only slightly creepy, but who cares, they are the sweetest!

Maybe one of these days I will finally have a half dozen of my own!

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

We had our second annual Jones Cousin Cinco de Mayo party tonight, which consisted of cousin fun and tons of DELICIOUS food.

Sara and I dressed up. Obviously.

Yes yes, we are an endless source of class. Try not to be too hard on yourself, we know that we command attention. However, both Philip and Jason wondered tonight why their wives insist on being as ugly as possible. Because remember last year?

We kind of thrive on this kind of thing, and I'm not going to lie, I can't stop laughing when I get a good look at our faces in the first picture. We are serious cholos. We are already sharpening our eyebrow pencils for next year. Happy Cinco de Mayo!

Things I love/am grateful for/am thinking about.

• Philip

I seriously can't get enough of him. Today when I visited him at work he said to me, "We need time off together." It made me so happy to know that he misses me like I do him when we work such different schedules. We then realized the next time we have off together is three weeks from now. Ugh, I'm tired of being busy.

• Work

We have jobs. Hallelujah. Over the past several months my employment has been uncertain and ever changing, which I kind of wasn't planning on. However, due to the fact that I have fantastic friends and family in the dental field, I have had people looking out for me and consequently, more work than I would have expected! Seriously, never have I been so grateful for my job and education, and especially my dad and sister, Sara, who both have been instrumental in me working so much. So I now work like a mad woman, and am grateful for every second of it.

• Our bikes.

We finally went on a bike ride recently and it was the highlight of my month. Arizona evenings in March and April provide the most delightful sunsets and perfect temperatures.

• That these two things are together on my counter.

Why wouldn't my pruning shears be next to a fancy punch bowl? This pretty much sums up recent events at my house though. Constant yard work and several fun parties. Both of which I have an endless love for.

• Salsa Cabana

I had dinner for uno tonight from my new favorite Mexican. If you haven't tried Salsa Cabana on Greenfield and Brown, try it. The above burrito was $4.70 (thanks to my 15% off preferred customer card), and it was heaven on earth. They are delicious and cheap and will bring you chips and salsa while you wait.

• Scraping my plate.

So after my burrito, I scraped what was left on my plate into the garbage. You probably wouldn't get why this was normal unless, like us, you grew up without a garbage disposal and a dishwasher. So after dinner my mom would tell us to "scrape our plate" into the trash (or if it was cereal or soup, you went and dumped it in the toilet), before putting it in the sink. Anyway, I did that tonight without thinking about it, and then it made me laugh.

• This outfit.

Nothin' says summer like my dude shorts and a groundhog shirt. And since Philip is working late, this is how I dress up for a Friday night.

• Classy candy.

My visiting teachers dropped this by. Apparently they know my love for all things fruity and chewy, bless them. And when you think sour candy, you automatically make a trip to See's right? My ward and neighborhood is classy, and I've got a long way to go.

• My green-ish thumb.

I'm pleased to announce that these little lovers are still alive, my roses are thriving, in fact they are blooming like crazy, I have two tomatoes on my plants and my zucchini are starting to get the yellow flower deals. I go outside to either water or just look lovingly at my plants at least twice a day. Just one more reason I love my house and being a home owner.

• My bugman.

DeRay of Harold's Exterminating came yesterday. Oh my word that man is the nicest on the planet, and always says nice things about our house, even though there is always at least one room that didn't quite get cleaned, and he's probably thinking that if we cleaned it we might not have bugs. He also calms my nerves about cockroaches and is more than willing to also spray our playhouse/swing set so that I feel good about letting kids play on it. And he's pretty dang cheap. Bonus.

• Alright, enough's enough. I need to work on my lesson for Sunday, especially since I didn't work on it last night because I took a nap in my bed at 7 pm, and woke up just minutes before Philip got home at 10:25. No regrets though, it was delightful. Happy almost May!

Party at our house - Part 2!

Are you ready for another party at our house?! When we were looking at houses, there were several that were really nice, that we really liked, that were similar sizes and whatnot, but when we saw ours, I loved that it had a huge family room. And I mean huge, like 17 x 33 feet, which just might be bigger than our condo. And thank goodness because have you met our families? Lots of us and we require a lot of space. And this is what it looked like when we saw it:

Yowza, that's a lot of red. No thanks.

And those curtains? It's not that they weren't done well, because everything in the house was impeccably made, but that dark red floral just wasn't doing anything for me. So before we even moved in, we took down all curtains and floral, and painted some light, airy, happy colors.

In comes the blue! It was an instant and welcome change. And then, I made the best decision that I've made since marrying Philip, and that is hiring Erica to decorate for me. Not even joking, she is heaven sent. She did such a fantastic job shopping for me and figuring out how to make our monster of a room not just look like an empty dance floor. And the poor thing, I pretty much wore her out and she might have sworn off designing for clients forever, but I couldn't be happier with the result. So here it is! Trying to give you a 360 degree view:

And this was taken from the fire place:

Erica and her mom, Michelle, were great at incorporating the things I already had with new finds and rearranging everything to fit perfectly together. And we owe almost all of the credit for new things to Home Goods and Ikea.

We are suckers for old books, so we already had all of those.

I love that she even added tiny sentimental details. One day I got a text from her asking what my anniversary was, reason being that she wanted the little balls in this bowl to have our anniversary date and AZ in it. How darling is that? Love love love it.

This might be one of my favorite parts of the room. I saw this temple picture and fell in love with it months ago but it had a hefty price tag of $300 and I didn't even have a house to put it in. Fast forward 9 months, I asked about it at Deseret Book, they had no idea what I was talking about, but then a miraculous chain of events took place and they found one for me! And better yet, it only cost $75 which included the frame! I was thrilled. But on a side note, Philip refers to it as, "The picture of the orange tree with the building behind it." Is that a Philip statement or what? Clearly he doesn't love it like I do.

And this darling little table was an Ikea find by Erica, in the As Is section, even though it is practically perfect! She was a warrior and practically fought off vultures while she waited for my text back giving her the okay.

Oh the art wall. Ohhhh, how I love this wall. When Erica first emailed me the mock up of this, I said something along the lines of, "I don't care how much that gray picture costs, I want it." To which she replied, "Hold on to your pants, because it is a sheet of wrapping paper, and it is $4.50." And that is why I love Erica, she's ridiculously resourceful. And I love the canvas of the tree, and the custom art with lyrics to our favorite song, and the frame and the green square...oh I love it all.

We had big plans of redoing the mantle and the sliding door, and even got a quote on it, but then our pool pump had to be replaced and rrrg, life just gets expensive, so that will have to wait a while longer. So we are making do for the time being.

I love that our tiny bird candle is perched on a book with a tree on it. Nerdy I know, but but still kinda cute, eh? Once again, she used almost all stuff that I already had, but got new filler for the jars and that lovely candle stick.

And another tiny but perfect detail, this tiny little nest in the jar! Absolute perfection!

And just a little something to spruce up the TV stand.

The whole thing came together so perfectly, I can't get enough of it. The only unfortunate thing is that I truly can't take credit for any of it! Erica was fantastic, and I cannot sing her praises enough! If it were up to me, the room would still be completely bare, and she was a champ at getting things done! I still need to make a few pillow covers to add more to the window seat and the couch, but based on how quickly I get things done, I'll show you the finished product in about 2012. Poor Erica, still waiting on me to follow through with the one assignment I was given. :) And that is it! She also helped with my kitchen, however, it was dirty when I was taking pictures, so we'll get to that another day. But have I said before how much I love our house? Because I do! It is so perfect for parties and showers (we've already hosted several!) and that is exactly what I wanted! It has tons of space in all the right places, which is perfect for us. Happy house guys! Come to a party at our house!