Melissa’s Place

I love surprises so I was excited to check the mail on Wednesday and find a package for me from Izea! I opened up the bright green box to find a bunch of 4th Of July goodies. JJ immediately claimed the paper planes and my daughters quickly wanted to play with the frisbee and finger puppets.

Friday did not start out so well though, Sariah broke my glasses!!! JJ taped them up for me so luckily they are still wearable.

Later on in the morning we watched the Freedom Festival fireside where Glenn Beck was the featured speaker. I really enjoyed his speech.

My brother-in-law, Stephen and his wife Kristina came over and we went to a park that had some events going on. Sariah made a shaker and both girls got their nails painted red, white and blue. JJ and Stephen then went rock climbing on a climbing wall that was set up.
Watch the video!

Bookmark to:

Before leaving for work JJ complained that there was nothing to eat. After I listed off all the things that he could make for lunch he just replied with “there is no bread”. I just finished making some bread so he can have “something to eat” for lunch tomorrow. He deserves it, he really is a hard worker, working two jobs this summer. Sometimes his hard working mindset leads him to do things he’s not supposed to though. Like when he was the Orkin man in North Carolina, he would destroy wasps nests on peoples roofs for them even though he didn’t have NC health insurance coverage. This did help him with his College Pro painter job last summer though, he was the only worker who would go on the roofs and his willingness to work hard gave him the assistant manager position.

Luckily he doesn’t do anything dangerous this summer!

Bookmark to:

My husband and I recently watched 27 dresses, it’s a cute movie. It had me thinking about how important it is to make the right decision about who you marry (I know I did!) and it also made me appreciate how much more simple my wedding was than the girls who worry so much about everything being perfect and they spend a fortune (or their parents do) on a wedding dress, fancy bridal lingerie, reception and honeymoon.

My wedding dress was $150 and I did the alterations myself, Esme (my brother-in-law’s wife) lent me her tiara, my twin sister made the wedding invitations. My sister and friends took pictures. I will have to say though that my parents did throw together a very nice reception in British Columbia for us and we also had a fun open house in Tennesee that my in-laws had for us a few months later. I really didn’t care about everything being perfect because to me the marriage was so much more important than the wedding. I do wish that we went on a honeymoon though, it would have been nice to have gone on a nice vacation before having children.

Bookmark to:

We didn’t really do anything for Canada day yesterday since we had to go to the USCIS application office in Salt Lake to renew my permanent resident card which went a lot smoother that when we first did it in Idaho. The people at the Salt Lake office were quick and friendly but JJ wasn’t able to eat his lunch in the building. Then we went to the temple while my brother in law’s wife, Kristina baby sat for us which was so nice of her!

On Monday evening we made Canada flags to put on our window here is Sariah with her picture that we made with her hand prints (she wasn’t upset she was trying to go for the “natural look”):

JJ also made a Canada Flag, the leaf doesn’t quite look like a maple leaf though!

Here is a picture of Rebekah looking so cute in the Canada Dress I made for my youngest sister when she was a baby:

Bookmark to:

One of the wonderful things about blogging is that we are able to keep connected to our family and friends. Blogging has also given me the opportunity to meet other bloggers around the world such as Angeline from Singapore who has given me this friendship award.

Angeline is currently the top commentator on this blog which shows what a wonderful blogging friend she is! I would like to pass this award onto the rest my top 10 commentators: Sara-Jayne, Kara, Esme, Marie, Karen, Beth, Amber, Lynne and Kristina.

Thank you for all your comments!

Bookmark to:

Tomorrow is Canada Day and I have to go down to Salt Lake to get fingerprinted and interviewed to renew my US permanent resident card. I know, not a very patriotic thing to do on Canada Day! While I go out to the laundromat tonight I am going to pick some stuff up for a little Family Canada Day celebration.

Friday of course is the 4th of July. We are still not totally sure what we are going to do.There is going to be a huge show at BYU with Milley Cyrus, we are close to BYU so we will be able to see the fireworks from where we live.

As we celebrate our patriotic holidays don’t forget about our men and women in tactical gear. Write to the American or Canadian soliders to show your support for them.

Bookmark to:

I read Kara’s blog while she was in the process of buying her house so I was expecting it to be time consuming but it is getting a little more overwhelming than I thought it would be right now. This weekend we dropped our loan officer who was not working very well with us and with another loan officer. Obviously I am annoyed with our first loan officer because we are just a couple weeks from closing and now we have to go through the approval again but dropping him was the right thing to do because someone who is not willing to work hard for us does not deserve our money. If you live in Utah I would advice not using Gold River Mortgage.

Bookmark to:

Those of us who are suffering in unbearable heat are grateful for the invention of air conditioners. It is not just humans who loose efficiency when we are over heated computers do as well.

For the last month our computer has been randomly crashing and shutting off. I wonder if this could be a cause of the computer overheating? Neither JJ or I really know a lot about computers so we don’t know the exact reason. I will have to get JJ to help me figure out how to remove the dust from inside the computer - I have heard that dust buildup on the CPU heat sink can be a major cause of computer shutdowns.

If that doesn’t solve the problem maybe a CPU cooler or a CPU performance fan would help they are sold at Link To Copy: http://www.xoxide.com/cpucoolers.html for reasonable prices.

Bookmark to:

The newest NBC reality show debuted last night, The Baby Borrowers features 5 teenage couples (at least the girls) who *think* they can handle having a baby. The couples will take care of a baby for 3 days, then take care of toddlers, children, pre-teens and even elderly people. All while living in a gorgeous home and not *really* having to deal with the actual financial stress that most young families need to deal with.

Obviously I don’t think this show will be a total reality check for the teens and of course that would be impossible to do but if this show does come back next season (I don’t think it will) the producers should have the teens live in a not so nice home and be given a limited amount of money where they will need to carefully budget their expenses.

It will be interesting to see how the teens do though. I am sure the boys will be the first to admit they are not ready to give up their xbox 360’s in exchange for providing for a family.

Bookmark to:

When someone comments on this blog for the first time I have to manually approve of it because I don’t want a bunch of spam on my blog. A couple months ago I accidently deleted some new commenters comments and I did the same thing today! I think I am clicking on ‘Approve’ but I don’t realize until it is too late that I clicked on ‘Mark As Spam’. Maybe if I had a viewsonic monitor I could see the two buttons clearer or maybe I just need to clean my glasses!

If I did delete your comment please don’t stop commenting I love to read all of your comments.

Bookmark to:

I was so busy this morning meeting with our mortgage lender, talking with our realtor and doing other house stuff. I didn’t even eat breakfast until 11:30! While I was on the phone Sariah decided to decorate the oven and dishwasher with red crayon. Her little hands were scrubbing for a long time, I don’t think it was really a punishment for her because she seemed to enjoy it.

However the worst part of the day is that my glasses keep falling off. I end up going to the optical department at walmart or costco everyone month to get my eyeglasses tightened only for them to become loose a few days later. I try so hard to keep my kids from pulling at my glasses but It is just something kids love to do.

Bookmark to:

It seems that cell phones have become the new pocket watch. When I think of an actual pocket watch I imagine a 19th century train conductor pulling out his pocket watch to see what time it was. According to this wikipedia article men considered wrist watches feminine until World War 1 when officers began to wear wrist watches to access the time more easily. Now women are no longer viewing pocket watches as too masculine. With some new pocket watches being made very small, pocket watches are now viewed as a piece of jewelery that can be very feminie especially if worn on on a necklace.

Bookmark to:

Serena is a 3 year old girl from Britain who has been fighting neuroblastoma for 18 months. Neuroblastoma is a cancer of the nerve cells. Most people who are diagnosed with this cancer are younger that 5 years old. Serena’s doctors have said that there is nothing more they can do to cure her but there is a in New York that offers another treatment. Serena’s parents are asking for everyone’s help in raising $250,000. Hopefully the hospital will allow them to go ahead with the treatments and then bill them later. If you would like to help please click on the widget below or visit the Help Save Serena blog.
  

Bookmark to: