Hope for Japan

When a huge disaster occurs like the earthquakes in Japan, or hurricane Katrina, I often feel helpless and a little detached because I know all my sad feeling and wishes for things to get better won't help. I watch the news reports, share with people in the feelings of saddness and amazement of the survivors. And that is it.

I don't know what changed this time. I guess I saw other people on Etsy donating a portion of their sales to the relief efforts and I decided- I could do that too. (maybe I saw one too many disney "you can make a difference" commercials, i dunno.)

So my sister and I decided to design and offer a special scrabble tile pendant in our Jubilation Studios store,  devoted to helping those in need in Japan. It isn't anything over top, just a simple statement of Hope.

The Japanese characters for "hope" are in the background, and the english word "hope" is in the foreground, reminding us that no matter who or where we are, we can have hope. 100% of the proceeds are being donated to relief efforts for Japan. The pendant is currently $6, though we have taken special orders for $10 pendants.

If you want to order one- click on one of buttons or links in this blog or on the side bar. If you hate Etsy and want to order via well, me, or if you want to donate more than $6 and still get a pendant, shoot me an email at jubilationstudios@gmail.com and we can set it up!

Family

I could not figure out what to do with my Sunday today.
I wanted to blog, but if I blog on my crafty blog that is probably "working" on work stuff. So I can't do that.
I really really want to start making all the Japan Relief Pendant orders we received this weekend, but that is really really working on the Sabbath, so no go there.

So I wandered around the blogs for a while till I came across this photo:

WHAT HAPPENED TO MY FAMILY! Everyone looks very odd in this photo to me.

See, my dad should have A LOT more facial hair, and maybe a few more pounds. My mom should have WAY POOFIER hair, and bangs that rise a few inches off her head and she should be wearing some printed flowery shirt that is tucked in with a belt. MY BROTHER SHOULDN'T BE THAT TALL. Nor should he have a thick boy neck or look "hot" in any way.

Blech.

This is how my family should look, minus my mom who is taking the photo. (And you are so lucky mom that I couldn't find that perfect 80's photo of you!)

Awe. Now doesn't that remind you of how your family is supposed to look! I feel much better.

Good Weekend

It seems like we've been pretty busy nearly every weekend since the start of the year. Last weekend was Stake Conference, and though it added to our list of weekends that were already planned, it ended up being cool because we had Elder Anderson of the 70 come and talk to us. All the messages were focused on the family and how to raise a righteous family in these latter days. 

However, my favorite message was: Men, help out around the house. Women: Be thankful for the help.

Or at least that is what my ears heard. ;-)

Brian's ears must have heard the same thing because when Saturday rolled around he decided that we needed some more clean clothes for the weekend, and so...... He Did the Laundry! It was glorious.

In return, first, I didn't worry or stress over how he was doing the laundry.

Second, I started the yard work for the spring! I cleared out all leaves in the front area and along the pathway. A most excellent and satisfying way to spend the day.

Better yet, we got to end our evening at a Hawks/Blazer game! Brad stayed home with a babysitter, and we jetted off to the Phillips Arena! Brian wore his bright red Blazer shirt and I wore a Hawks shirt so we were balanced, but we both sported Blazer "3 goggles" to show the love. (If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you aren't a Blazer fan.)

We had wicked seats gifted to us by a friend. So this pic, yea I took it from a few rows back. These are the two cutest guys on the team- no contest. Aaaaand they are pretty talented too.


Just to make our weekend extra wonderful, we had beautiful weather on Sunday, so we spent half the day outside enjoying fresh air. Brian was a bit sick, so he stayed home from church and kept Brad with him so I could enjoy a day of church without the kiddo.

Brian may have set up our new slide for Brad while I was gone.


The weather was sooo nice we heeded the council given the weekend before and spent some much desired family time together outside.

Brian even felt well enough for a little bbq outside. Although he did give me the annoyed, "why do you have to document every part of our life" look while I took his picture. He said he perfected it earlier in life thanks to his mom.

Disney World 2011!

Every winter Brian gets a little restless at work and requests a vacation. Two years ago we went to Disney World in February, and last year we went to Washington DC. This year.. Yup, Disney again. Who could resist.. it is just 8 hours away!

So he sneakily turned it into a birthday present for me. Which was nice.

Brad was pretty excited about being in this new crazy place. And so so about riding the rides.

They weren't scary for him. He just sat and observed.

Brian and I opted for the "baby pass" on the big rides. I actually didn't mind riding alone at all. I found it funny to watch the families with little kids. My fave was riding the Tower of Terror because I had a 10 year old girl continually asking me if it was scary and if they had seat belts.

The best was dessert the first night! I take this to be my b-day surprise. Brian reserved seats for us at Disney's Fireworks and Desserts thingy. Basically you walk up to four huge carts full of desserts, grab a plate and stuff your face. They even had hot chocolate and milk!

This was my round 1. My faves ended up being the cannoli, the berry tart, and the chocolate strawberry.

Then we had awesome seats for the fireworks show! Tinkerbell flew right over our head.

I can't believe we got him to wear this hat all morning long.

 This was our only character experience. It went well, and Bradley was pretty excited to meet Goofy and Pluto. He would have been really really excited to meet Mickey, but we weren't up for that line. 

On Safari with Brad and Dad!! We saw hippos, rhinos, giraffes, and more!

Bradley really liked Toy Story Mania. Not because he could see the show, he liked the crazy ride and pulling the string on the gun. You could say it was more fun than a barrel of monkeys for sure.

Okay. So Bradley's all time favorite thing was..... The Honey I Shrunk the Kids land. Everything is huge- that is a huge dog's nose on the right there. It is sniffing Brad. We let him run wild with out any restraints. Too bad we didn't discover it till the end of the day on our last day! I guess we'll know for the future.

Sleep baby Sleep

Some moms are overly worried about feeding their kids all natural/chemical free foods, some moms are overly worried about autism and immunizations. I guess I am overly worried about forming bad habits. Especially when it comes to sleep.

My brain thinks things like  "If I don't put him to bed after 9:30 every night he will wake up too early in the morning. If I rock him to sleep he will never learn to sleep on his own, if I let him cry it out he will not sleep well, be cranky, and hate me when he wakes up. If he wakes up too early from a nap, he won't go back to sleep on his own if I rock him. If I bring him into bed with me in the morning he will sleep better. Worst of all, if I don't pay ridiculous attention to all these little sleepy things I will have a three year old that won't sleep by himself or have any good sleep habits."

The longer I am a mom the more my experience shows me that most of these thoughts are silly, and the issues resolve themselves over time. And I'm pretty good about quelling most of my truly paranoid thoughts into infrequent worries. But I still find that when I'm under stress or when I'm sleepy, they still creep into my head and stick till my brain is working again.

Brad started out last week with a cold, or maybe teething I never know, and so his beautiful, normal sleep patterns started going crazy. It always takes me a few days to figure out something is up. So instead of waiting to see how things go, I start in with the over analyzation in the mean time. I began worrying about what I am doing that might be causing the problem or what I can do to help. It rarely occurs to me that Bradly will shift back to normal on his own.

So I started with a warmer blanket. This seemingly helped. Then he started waking up early from naps. So I rocked him back to sleep and put him down. He slept for another hour and a half. Sweet success right? NO. More waking up, more sleeping at odd times. What what what?? Teeth? Cold? nobody knows.

This week. All better.

GA Aquarium Today

Ever since we came back from oregon, Brian has been busy during the weekends. Every weekend! So Brian promised that we could do something fun on his off friday this weekend. In contemplating what fun thing we could do it occurred to me that we haven't been to an aquarium in a while. Our number of aquarium vs air museum trips isn't too good. Naturally, I felt that a trip to the Atlanta Aquarium was needed.

Truth be told - I love fish. They taste pretty good yea, but I really love looking at them. I've only ever swam with the fish once or twice, and that was pretty much cooler than any aquarium ever. But since I don't get that opportuinity every day, looking at them through plexiglass is the next best thing.

Bradley liked them too. I think he mostly liked walking around by himself, but he did stop to enjoy the fish occasionally.

Brian tolerated the fish. He much preferred the otters, but as fish go, he did like this aquarium. Nearly every exhibit featured fish and other sealife in a 360 capacity. there is even a clear tunnel through the water where you can see everything swimming around in the deep saltwater exhibit! Sharks, manta rays, whale sharks, hammerheads, huuuge other kinds of fish.

I would also say that about half of the exhibits featured a hands on sea life experience. My hint -  even if you don't have kids that will play in the kid zone area, go in anyways because they have the coolest hands on stuff in there. We touched a live: manta ray (or some kind of ray), a shark fin, a star fish, a sea urchin, and I touched a sea anemone!

 These are fish from Africa! How colorful, and ornate, and swishy! Gliding through the water must be so relaxing.

Okay, so I fully understand not everyone gets as excited about fish as me. But I still think it is a very neat aquarium and worth a visit.

Not really Goals

I've been thinking about this new year for nearly half of last year. I've slowly been formulating some "goals" or more like personal desires that I would like to work on now that Bradley is out of the 100% attention phase. We are in a 70-60% attention phase now.
So what do I want to do with my 30% + of time not spent on Brad??

Clean? Yea right.
Cook? Kinda.
Craft.... Yahtzee!

But I can't just craft all the time. First my dear hubby wouldn't appreciate the constant spending of hard earned funds with out any pay back other than self gratification. So I guess this needs to be a money making endeavor. And second, I do have to clean the house.

A few years ago I ordered a scrabble tile pendant from a seller on Etsy. I've been a little obsessed over the last year about it. I'm a good designer, I could easily design better imagery for these little tiles. I'm a good crafter. It only took me one try to figure out how to make these little guys. AND I already have a mother with a successful website so I could network between two websites.
For practice and for service... I used the tile pendants as an incentive project for my Young Women for church. So now I've had nearly a year of experience making them. And I've extensively experimented on papers, printers, glues, and done some dabbling in jewelery baubles. I think I'm ready to start this little project. Too bad I only have two naps a day to really get any work done.

So now I need another buddy to help me... Who do I know who wouldn't mind a few extra bucks a month who is already spends a lots of time on the net, a pro blogger and experimenter, whose husband already has his own etsy site... Heidi!!!! My dear sister.

So now I have a half baked plan to sell these pendants online with my sister doing the footwork on the Internet. Wish me luck and lots of sells!!

Oh yea, other "goals...."
um. Clean the stupid house more often. Paint the kitchen & bathroom. Get a haircut. Raise a charming and sweet boy.