Drunk on Chocolate

A few weeks ago I had a wonderful day. Now, lots of days are wonderful for many different reasons but this one was earns a blog post. For Julia's birthday I signed us up for a class. Not just any class...a class on chocolate. As her surprise, Logan flew her out specially for a day and the husbands took over the children and home so we could play and shop and eat chocolate. Sweet, thoughtful men and best husbands ever.

So to begin, Julia flew out around noon and off we went to Bellevue. First we stopped for salads at The Cheesecake Factory. Julia's, as she stated, was apparently in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness month.

We then shopped, talked, bought little trinkets, and got makeovers at the MAC counter from a lady who treated us with contempt because we didn't know how important eye shadow base was. Life behind a makeup counter must be hard, dealing with such idiots all day long.

At 6pm we finally arrived to the main event. Oh! Chocolate chocolate class. Glory, hallelujah!

We started off with a taste of Brazilian sipping chocolate, which basically was a melted candy bar in a cup. (Yes family, the normal way I like my hot chocolate.) The owners talked about how their grandparents started the business, which was fascinating. Great story. Then we progressed to a plate of different chocolates where we were forced to try each kind as the owner talked us through how each was made and the best type of recipes to use them in.

And then after being taught how to temper the chocolate, we were let loose. With cups and cups of melted chocolate, we hand dipped strawberries, raspberries, marshmallows, oreos, potato chips, graham crackers and more to heart's content.

Pure heaven...

Early on I apparently got into my work and wore it for the entire night. Can you say mortified?

We got to take our home our literally 10 lb box of hand dipped chocolates. The gift that kept on giving.

Can we say awkward picture?! I had just discovered my chocolate-laden chest and Julia made me memorialize the embarrassing evidence of my chocolate-drunken sloppiness.

Oh! Chocolate, we love you...

Wanted: eyes in the back of my head

I was IN THE ROOM when this happened, washing lotion out of my eyes. Apparently I need another pair.

Runaway Bride

Anyone remember that movie? With Julia Roberts who left 3 men at the alter and Richard Gere, the reporter, who comes to write a story about her only fall in love but then gets left at the alter himself? One of his explanations of why Julia runs from marriage is that she doesn't know herself, case in point The Eggs. He asks each of her ex-fiances how Julia likes her eggs and each one have a different answer. She liked them how they liked them. She herself didn't know how she even liked her eggs because she conformed to whomever she was with.

I realized when it comes to design, I am Julia. I walk into someone's home and love their retro feel and clean lines. That same day I go into someone else's house and love their kitchy, old world feel. Some days I love lots of bold colors and funky patterns, and other days I adore calming neutrals. Some days I really go for the classic drama of dark woods and other times lots of white call to me.

When I decided to redo my dining room, almost a year ago, I found myself stuck. Completely. I didn't know what I liked. How do I redo a room when I have decorating ADD? So I went out to search for rooms that struck me. I started collecting pictures just from other blogs and other homes sites, and I began to see a pattern.

I really love whites and light and blues these days. I love the neutrals with splashes of fun color. My house right now has been so dark...dark woods, dark furniture, dark accents. But in our home, even with the sun out, we don't get much direct sunlight through the windows. So maybe it's the dark grey winters that have gotten to me or maybe just my tastes have changed, but I need light and white and to get rid of so much dark. We started by painting our dining room a great white, suggested by my dear friend and decorating guru, C. And it's taken off from there. Light is beginning to take over our home and I love it! I have also realized I LOVE thrift stores and garage sales. I love going through junk and finding things I can make new again. Really calls to me these days. But it also makes the redecorating process slow as I search for just the right thingy to put on the wall. I have a few projects I will post but some are still a work in progress. It's become and hobby and a bit of a passion to learn how to refinish furniture, sew slipcovers and spray paint anything. We'll see where it takes our little home. Stay tuned.

The Picture

Yes, my sweet sister found it. And yes, we rocked the 80's -Suburbia style.


What more can I say?

Return of The Hair

I wish I had the picture of our family from the Chicago Jackson Family Reunion. It was around 1990 and the Decade of the Hair. My sisters, my mother and I all wore our hair like everyone else. Big and curly. We were "blessed" with curls and we made the most of what we had, let me tell you. We were the girls with H.A.I.R. For example, here's a picture from when I was 16. {Lovin' the eyebrows.}

This was taken the morning I went into the MTC. {Think we're related?!}


But after Lucas was born, hormones took over. Crazy, out-of-control little things that have wreaked havoc on my life. I am amazed at how much they govern in the body and little did I know, how much they affect my hair. It became straighter and straighter as the years went on. So I gave in and began my straight hair phase. It still had curl but it was limp and wacko, so I resigned myself to straightening it everyday.

I learned to really like it. Being able to brush it out and look good as new, and having it look nice for more than a day. I embraced the fact I was older and could use a more sophisticated hair style. Shorter, sleek and trendy.

Almost a decade passes and enter another pregnancy and another hormone wack. My hair since Jonah has been getting more and more out of control. I got lazy this summer and stopped straightening (let me tell you, it got to be such a pain) and now it's as curly as it was back in high school. These pictures don't show the full crazy but I think am just gonna have to re-embrace my au natural, not worrying about frizziness or bigness of curls. I am what I am and that means H.A.I.R again.

So to make a long, pointless post end... I'm back, baby!

Tender Mercies

As I mentioned in my last post, there has been a forest fire in Herriman, Utah, right where Aaron's aunt and uncle live. Below is the picture of their home Sunday night as they watched from their children's home down the road. All they could do is watch with binoculars from the window of their children's' house as the fire surrounded their home.

This was the picture Monday morning. There are charred marks on the house and their entire orchard of 130 trees where destroyed but his Aunt Myrna said the house didn't even smell like smoke.
Their neighbor's home and a half a dozen around them burned to the ground.

It just goes to show you never when you will be praying with gratitude for the tender mercies of the Lord or praying for strength to confront the trial that has been allowed for your growth and progress. Either way, hopefully we are learning faith and dependence on our Savior and feeling His love.

Our prayers are with you.

Terrible, Horrible, No-good, Very-bad Day

Poor kid. Lucas had a rough morning and I have to admit I was ready to scoot him out the door for school. It all started out fine but early, as we got a call at 6am regarding a financial detail from the ward clerk and we were all up a running, well not running, but awake by 6:30am. Anyway, Lucas' descent into utter frustration began when it was time for piano. We switched practices from after school to before school and he thought he wouldn't have to practice since it was lesson day. No such luck and he was not happy. Then he found out he had theory work to finish and then not the 2 pages he thought but 6! Then the dog peed (we think Cotton is having kidney problems. Getting him tested right now.) on his favorite project from animation camp and while we were cleaning that mess, Jonah colored all over the cover of the family scrapbook he's been working on all week for school. Then his yo-yo got all tangled and is stuck in knots, he couldn't find his toothbrush since Jonah LOVES toothbrushes and absconds them daily, and we couldn't find matching socks so he had to wear a pair of his father's. There were hugs and assurances that life was going to get better today but I don't know if they were believed.


I don't want to tell him that my morning hasn't gotten much better. I tried making German pancakes for breakfast but something spilled in the oven I guess last time I used it and the house is now filled with smoke. I let Jonah play in the sink to get him out of my hair and I didn't see 2 glasses under a metal bowl which are now in shards. Luckily JB was not cut by either. He just is yelling, "Dude! I wet!" as he soaks the front of his shirt. (He gets the "dude" from me. I can't believe how often that comes out of my mouth, usually as an exclamation to one Jonah mess or another. I have to admit Jonah did inadvertently learn "family jewels" from Aaron last week as he awkwardly rolled over Aaron while we rested on the bed. Of course, he kept saying it because of the reaction he got from all of us.)


Well, I better go. I'm gonna stick Jonah in a warm bath since his lips are blue due to being soaked from head to toe with cold sink water and the back door being open to let out all the smoke. Today is officially laundry day since I haven't been caught up with laundry for 2 weeks. Life as usual.



PS To help Luke keep things in perspective I think I'll show him this picture taken last night of Aaron's Aunt Myrna and Uncle Jim's home in Herriman, Utah. They were/are ravaged with a wildfire this weekend.

Can you believe that they woke up this morning to see their house still standing and unburned? What a miracle and tender mercy from the Lord! Not everyone in their neighborhood was so lucky and our prayers are with them. To see and hear about such tragedies keep the dirty oven and broken glasses where they should be, just a nuisance.

PPS For those of you who were around in the olden days, the above picture is the exact stance our 4-year-old Lucas took for his famous "Only FOOLS bathe 3 times a week!" speech.

Chocolate & Doritos

The sweet and the salty. The yin and the yang that make up Aaron and me. And the only two things Jonah would eat during his swallowing study on Tuesday. He hadn't eaten for 3 hours and literally wouldn't eat anything except chocolate and Doritos. That's my boy!


Most of you know Jonah is picky about his swallowing of food so we've taken him in to get tested, just to be sure there wasn't anything other than stubborness going on. He had an upper GI x ray last week where they strapped him immobile to a board with his elbows at his ears and made him drink barium to see if there's any obstruction. Super fun! Gratefully, everything looked normal.


This time around he got to sit up and have a picnic, eating food and taking x rays to see how his mouth and throat muscles worked together. The trickiest part was he had to eat barium in order to get the x rays. So we tried liquid barium in bottles of all varieties and sippy cups, apple juice and chocolate milk flavored barium, bread and cereal slathered with a dollop of barium and cookies with barium baked into them. It wasn't until we tried a chocolate & barium sandwich that we got him to actually swallow. And then we celebrated more success with the Dorito Barium Surprise. Basically 2 Doritos with chalk frosting smooshed in the between. Yummy.


And the results were that his "chewing is immature" and he has "delayed swallowing." Basically he doesn't chew his food well enough and then when he goes to swallow his throat muscles don't work in sync with his mouth. So the food can sit in his throat and he gets overwhelmed, so he chokes or he chooses just to spit it out before he gags. We still have to go back to the gastrointerologist to get the final say of all the test results but basically it's developmental and we have to move slowly with his diet and textures.

All is all, nothing serious, just delays in his eating development and we just try to stay patient and keep feeding him. Basically what we thought to begin with but its nice to know it's nothing more. I'll be interested to hear the final verdict from the Dr and if there is any "feeding therapy" where you go and have people feed you yummy stuff to practice your chewing. That's my kind of therapy!


Trying to keep the hungry Disaster entertained while we waited to go in to see the doctor. Even the camera couldn't keep his mind off of "bobbies" and daydreams of formula.