I'm done!! Hallelujah! I am so happy with how it turned out! In fact, I think I like Madeleine's even better than the crib bedding. Don't get me wrong, the baby bedding is super cute, but what I love about the twin size is that it's not all hidden by the crib. Just had to show it off!
Now that Spencer is in Houston I have been able to see lots more of our house. But since they are really probably only interesting to me, I will only post one picture. Plus, he sent most of them to me by text and I don't know how to get them from my phone to my computer. I'm sure it's not hard, but I'm not doing it right now.
Madeleine turned 6 last week! To celebrate with our family, we had lunch with everyone after Spencer's graduation. She loved her cupcake cake, especially the tiara and wand that came on top. The wand broke yesterday and she was devastated.
We tried out trick candles (relighting) and that was pretty funny. We kept blowing them out, but ultimately we had to put them in water. Their relighting function worked really well!
If you have never gotten a cupcake cake before, I hope this picture can serve as a warning to you about what you are in for. Do you think there is enough frosting on that tiny cupcake?
On the day of her birthday she wanted to eat at Olive Garden again like we did last year.
Then we went out for frozen yogurt for dessert instead of having more cake (she had brought some to school earlier that day).
This one is for Grandma Sandi and Grandpa Paul.
Happy birthday Madeleine! We can't believe how quickly you are growing up!! And we are so proud of you and all you are accomplishing and what a mature little lady you are becoming! We love you!
Alright. I've been slaving away at this crib bedding since Saturday and today I've finally finished. What do you think?
I don't know why this next picture is turned on its side. It's not a great picture but I wanted to show a closer view of the darling fabrics and how they came together. I think the print on my bumper is much cuter than the white bumper on my inspiration bedding.
I also used some muslin that my mom had on hand to make a crib sheet. If you're ever interested, it was pretty easy. These are the instructions I used.
Now I am working on making a matching duvet cover for Madeleine's bed. After it's done I will post more pictures. I'm so excited to pull it all together in their room in our new house! (Which is coming along nicely. Cabinets were delivered today and texture was sprayed on walls and ceilings. So exciting!!)
This is the note Madeleine wrote to remind us of her ballet recital. I love her spelling. And I love that she put May secinte (second) even though it was actually on the 15th. She's hilarious.
Here's our beautiful little dancer! I'm pretty confidant that her favorite things about her recital are wearing make up and the fancy costumes. I don't think I ever posted about her losing her two front teeth, but you can see her permanent teeth front and center. I can't believe how fast she is growing up! 
This is her teacher Miss Melendie. She has been wonderful! We've loved having Madeleine at her little studio and we're not expecting to find quite the same thing in Texas. Madeleine is very eager to try gymnastics though so we may not have to worry about comparing one dance studio to another. I guess time will tell.
I wanted to post a video from that night but it wouldn't upload. Check back in case I can get it to work later. It's very cute!
Finally! We are no longer students!! Can I say that even though I've just been married to a student and not actually a student myself? On May 15, 2010 Spencer graduated from the W.P. Carey School of Business at ASU. He has had such a great experience being in this program, but he's also glad it's over. It's so wonderful to be moving on to the next phase of our lives. I am so proud of Spencer and how hard he worked in school and how hard he works at everything! He hardly knows how to relax. In fact, he is already in Houston working at his new job with ExxonMobil. Not much of a break, right?
This picture is of all the students who specialized in Real Estate so this was the crowd Spencer had the majority of his classes with. They spent a lot of time together!
Can you spot Spencer in this photo? I'll give you a hint: he's turned around and looking at the camera.
These are the other LDS couples we spent a lot time with over the past two years. They are so much fun and we are definitely going to miss hanging out with them. We are lucky though that one couple is moving to Houston too so we don't have to lose all our friends at once!
My mom and dad came to graduation too. They've been as involved in Spencer's schooling as I have been so they are well aware of how hard he's worked and how awesome an accomplishment this is.
Drew came out from California to show his support. It was fun to get to spend a couple days with him one last time before we move so much further from him.
The kids were so good at graduation. As far as graduations go, I think this one was pretty good. Only one speaker before they announced the graduates, but it was still pretty boring for a 3 and almost 6 year old. They were certainly glad when it was over and they had fun trying on Spencer's clothes.
Like I said, Spencer is already down in Houston and the kids and I will be joining him next Friday. We will be in an apartment until our house is finished, hopefully a couple weeks before we welcome the newest addition to our family. Can't wait!
I have been thinking a lot about how to decorate our girls' room and what type of bedding would be cutest. I was leaning toward doing a black and white damask theme, which I do still really like, but I wasn't 100% sure. Then my sister Olivia (check out her blog here) offered her opinion and it swayed me. I was feverishly looking for other ideas yesterday when I came upon this bedding set. What do you think?
I think it is so DARLING!! The problem is that is costs $600. Sorry, I'm not the kind of mom who can justify spending that much money on crib bedding. Or any other bedding set for that matter. I decided that it doesn't look like it would be too difficult to recreate and I could make a matching quilt for Madeleine's bed too. That would be even better. I then spent even more time scouring different websites in search of a cute printed fabric that would be just right for this project. I found lots of good options, but ultimately ended up at Joann's and found this:
The color's a bit softer than my inspiration bedding, but I think it's going to be perfect!! I am so excited!! I didn't sleep very well last night due to my mind racing over thoughts of this bedding coming together. And unfortunately this weekend is poised to be way too full of activities for me to be able to get started just yet, but soon enough I will get to work and see this thing take shape. It's lucky I decided to do this while I still live with my mom. Her help is going to be invaluable. Wish me luck!!
Neither of these pictures are anything amazing, but I decided to post them anyway since they are from our new camera. Which, also, actually is not super special, but the viewfinder works and it takes pictures, so now our blog will be able to have current pictures on it again (as long as we actually take them). Hallelujah!! I hope that sometime in the not-too-distant future we will be able to get a really nice camera (like a digital SLR) but for now we needed something functional and inexpensive. So for a combined Mother's Day and graduation gift to each other we got our new camera. Ian is eager to get his hands on it, but we have told him that is strictly forbidden. It's thanks to our kids that we needed a new one in the first place. 
I look at this and think "yuck," but whatever. This was me last night curled up with Spencer's laptop catching up on my TV shows online. I have DVR so why should I have to watch shows online? Well, my DVR had a problem a few weeks ago where it wouldn't record anything on ABC. Really? Just ABC? Only 90% of the shows we watch are on that channel! So annoying. I finally decided to buckle down and catch up. You see, my DVR missed about a week and a half of shows but then we fixed it so there were all these subsequent episodes piling up and tempting me to watch out of order. I couldn't do that. Don't get me wrong, I think it's awesome that a person can see all the shows they want online. But I do not pay for DVR service so I can watch TV on my computer. If you have Tivo or DVR you know exactly what I'm talking about. Don't worry. I'm caught up now and all is right with the world.
Now, so you know what you have to look forward to thanks to our new camera: Spencer's graduation, Madeleine's ballet recital, our new house, our new baby. And I'm sure we'll find other stuff worth taking a picture of. All in good time.
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Here's the latest picture of our house. We have a wonderful salesman who goes by the property almost everyday and takes a picture to send us since we aren't there to check progress ourselves. It is the highlight of our day to see how things are coming along! Even though it will still not be done by the time we get down there, I can hardly wait to see it in person!
Another bit of progress: although we will have packers and movers come take care of getting our stuff to Texas, there is plenty to do beforehand so they don't pack up all our garbage and move it 1200 miles. Yesterday, my mom and I sorted through all the toys and packed up what we will take and left out things that she'll keep here and/or donate. It was quite a task. I'm lucky I have such a great, hard-working mom to get that project rolling and I am so glad it's done!
Next up: tackling the junk in our many closets.
