V and Co: driving across america

for the summer months i'll be blogging here and there with a few pics of what we're up to. i'll be closing comments so that i can focus mainly on my family and this special and rare occasion of having my WHOLE family at home. you can still contact me via email, facebook, or twitter. please feel free to! and we'll "talk" more on the blog after the summer months! thanks so much!

well. we made it to our new home state. oh crap did we make it. what a ride. we're here but still under a mountain of boxes and trying to figure out our life...and eating out almost every meal because we have no refrigerator. it comes tomorrow thankfully.

on our first day my wonderful husband turned 36.
and i completely forgot till about 10 am to wish him a happy birthday.
we had been up since 3:30 am so seriously 7 hours of being around each other awake, and i totally missed the mark.
but i had good reason.

our day went a little like this:
3:30 wake up
4:00 kids all awake and jake and i chasing the cat down to get a liquid pill of bendryl in her mouth to help her be "calm"
4:15 jake holding down and being mauled by the cat's claws as i squeeze the pill in the cat's mouth
4:16 all of us watching with open mouths and in awe as the cat foams from the mouth and transforms from a happy patient cat to an angry feral beast of a cat trying to get the "poison" out of her mouth.
4: 20 giving up trying to get her to eat anything with benedryl in it or even getting close to her to try to give her more...and literally stuffing the cat inside the cat crate as the husband gets new gashes up and down his arms trying to get the cat in.
4:30 get the kids the dog and the last luggage in the car...gingerly place the angry, still foaming and growling cat in the cab of the truck.
4:31 drive away and test out walkie-talkies
4:32 husband decides we need road names, he picks "siracco taco" and he assigns me "big mama"

span forward to about 10 am "siracco taco" walkie talkies "big mama" that we need to let the cat and the dog do some business. we roll into a pet friendly rest stop and i park next to the moving van and look over only to see the cat pop its head up over the window from the husband's lap. he looks at me and explains "yeah, at about 7 i couldn't take the meowing anymore, so i let her out of the crate, and well i've basically been wearing her as a hat for the last three hours."

10: 05 place the cat in a cat harness with a leash attached to it (yes, it looks as ridiculous as it sounds) and place her on the ground next to the cat litter only to find out that the harness to our cat equals the same as being scared to the fainting goats.
never heard of the fainting goats? need a visual of our cat? watch this to get an idea:

literally she went stiff as a board and fell on her side refusing to move. so we waited and sat and watched and nothing. we did laugh though.
so...
10:25 we pile in our car, and jake the cat and nate pile in the moving truck, leaving the cat out of the crate and bringing in the kitty litter in the cab of the truck just in case she decided to go.

as we leave i kept thinking how much i love laughing with that man. how much we have fun, and how often he makes me feel better. and just like that a light bulb went off.
10:26 "this is big mama to siracco taco, do you copy?"
"go ahead big mama"
"hey, happy birthday...sorry i forgot to say that till now"
"thanks"
"i love you"
"yeah i love you too"
"big mama over and out."
oh and yeah
12:25 "sirocco taco to big mama do you copy?"
"big mama to siracco taco i copy go ahead"
"somebody went tinkle!!!! over and out."

the cat spent the rest of the 2 day trip on jake's lap.

siracco taco, sorry your birthday sucked, next year we'll have to make it better.
big mama over and out.

V and Co: summer pics: bubbles

for the summer months i'll be blogging here and there with a few pics of what we're up to. i'll be closing comments so that i can focus mainly on my family and this special and rare occasion of having my WHOLE family at home. you can still contact me via email, facebook, or twitter. please feel free to! and we'll "talk" more on the blog after the summer months! thanks so much!

bubbles:



we're enjoying our last 5 days here in utah.
but i'm really looking forward to moving on and FINALLY getting back to some kind of normalcy...even if it will be a new normal.
i'm.so.ready.

V and Co: summer pics: material

for the summer months i'll be blogging here and there with a few pics of what we're up to. i'll be closing comments so that i can focus mainly on my family and this special and rare occasion of having my WHOLE family at home. you can still contact me via email, facebook, or twitter. please feel free to! and we'll "talk" more on the blog after the summer months! thanks so much!

material:
last week i got to go hang out with a bunch of wonderful women. we talked about projects, moving, and cackled like old women without a care in the world. thanks for such a fun time. i'll see most of you at sewing summit! and of course hoping to meet so many more of you out there as well.
speaking of sewing...i did it last week. yeah i sure did. i got together with this gal (cause her mom, who she's visiting, lives over by my mother in law where we're staying at) showed her this fabric, and said "i'm thinking of making this with it...what do you think?" and well, a project completed, a photo shoot scheduled for later this week, and a new pattern for the shop in mind, i am one happy and feeling accomplished camper. yeah yeah so it's been most of the summer since i actually picked up fabric and made it into something...BUT it sure got me excited for that pesky winter hits and i'm stuck inside all day with just my sewing machine and loud music a blaring...i may actually look forward to winter if i look at it that way.
but enough about winter...we're still in summer...and loving it and i'll be over here dreaming of how i want this project scene set up, and where i'm going to execute it...exciting!

V and Co: summer pics: morning/sewing summit

for the summer months i'll be blogging here and there with a few pics of what we're up to. i'll be closing comments so that i can focus mainly on my family and this special and rare occasion of having my WHOLE family at home. you can still contact me via email, facebook, or twitter. please feel free to! and we'll "talk" more on the blog after the summer months! thanks so much!

morning:
this morning i woke up to realize we have 12 days till we load up the truck with all of our life's belongings. in that said truck the husband will be towing his own truck, and he will be trailed by me driving our car with 4 kids a dog and a cat, and oh yeah...towing our camper...and (might as well adding this) losing all kinds of sanity...to head out on our over 1,200 mile move to our final destination of iowa...oh heaven help me.
i may need to get some benedryl for the hives i've just created writing that last long sentence.
all i can say is that it will be one of two things:
A) it will run so dang smoothly with no hiccups or any problems including the animals, and the dog and the cat.
or
B) i will have another series of "unfortunate events" posts again with all the crap that will occur on our lovely trip...
i'll make sure to take notes.

now some fun stuff for you (maybe) and some more hives creating thoughts for me:
over at the sewing summit they did a little Q and A of yours truly... i divulge a little on what we will be covering in my class in October...if there's something you'd like to suggest for the class email me, or leave me some feedback via facebook...i have a basic plan set up but i am always open to suggestions!
i'm kind of excited...well in the want to throw up in my mouth a little sort of way excited...but you wouldn't expect anything else from me right?
we'll talk soon!

V and Co: summer pics: grandma's house

for the summer months i'll be blogging here and there with a few pics of what we're up to. i'll be closing comments so that i can focus mainly on my family and this special and rare occasion of having my WHOLE family at home. you can still contact me via email, facebook, or twitter. please feel free to! and we'll "talk" more on the blog after the summer months! thanks so much!


now that we have officially sold, emptied out, and cleaned the town house, we will be staying at my in laws 35 minutes north of provo for the next two and half weeks. my in law's house will now house my husband and i, our 4 kids, our cat and dog...my mother in law takes it all in stride...my father in law is rejoicing on the inside...i can just tell. ;p regardless of his excitement i feel like we need to be doing things outside of the house...so today and yesterday we swam


heck i even got in the water!
some of you who follow me on facebook saw that i attempted the "curly hair look" for the first time in umpteen years. i think i said "hell has officially frozen over..."
i was feeling pretty good (bless the husband, he kept encouraging me by saying how "hot" my hair looked, every time he remembered to say something about it) and i even seemed kind of positive about posting a picture today...when at lunch we went to subway sandwiches and a little kid turned around in line in front of us and literally gasped when he looked up at me. the husband says i took him by surprise is all...i don't believe him...i think i scared him. which just goes back to childhood memories...SO back to straight hair for me.
BUT! i want to say thank you to all of you who have sent me product info for curly hair, and success stories with said products. i'm already putting money aside because i'll be dropping a ton of money on said products because i really don't want to keep scaring small children. :/
we'll talk soon.

V and Co: summer pics: welcome july

for the summer months i'll be blogging here and there with a few pics of what we're up to. i'll be closing comments so that i can focus mainly on my family and this special and rare occasion of having my WHOLE family at home. you can still contact me via email, facebook, or twitter. please feel free to! and we'll "talk" more on the blog after the summer months! thanks so much!

welcome july:
seriously i can't believe we're in july.
first off thank you for the countless emails and comments on our getting ready to move to the mid-west. a lot of you have made us that more excited about moving to iowa. :) i've been having so much fun reading everything you have shared with me about iowa to my husband and kids. the kids are super excited with all the fun places and things you have told us we need to do.
yes, the state fair has already been marked on our calendar to be one of the first things we do as we settle into our new environment! so really thank you. we can't wait!

well, i sort of can though...first off the humidity is going to do a horrific number on my hair. remember this post? yeah, already thinking i need to invest on corn-rows (perhaps with sea shells at the end of them like monica's in "friends"?) or a lot of hats... or something. hmmm maybe this blog will turn into a dedication to horrible hair days, or maybe JUST maybe i can try to embrace some of my "curl" HA!HA!HAHahaha..ha...aha..hmm...i don't think so...i'll have to figure something out i'm sure.
also...
us moving to iowa means us moving away from family. both mine (in california) and jake's (almost all relocated to utah) will become more than a drive away. we've never been in this situation and it will be an adjustment...
but for now, our july looks a lot like june...
swimming in grandma's pool...

running around in a bathing suit most of the day either getting ready to go to some kind of water establishment...or getting home from one.
enjoying the outside...
with family, and new neighborhood friends...and missing the ones we've left behind.

also we are packing AGAIN! because we are in the process of getting ready to sign papers to sell our townhouse. it went quick, we know we're lucky...and we're not complaining...so we're moving again, for a couple of weeks...to my in-laws before we move for lets hope the final time to iowa.
stay tuned...