a baby mayor

Ella: Mom, on T.V. I saw a baby wearing a tall black hat, and just a diaper. Guess what the funniest part is.
Me: I have no clue.
Ella: The baby was a mayor. Ha ha ha!
Me: Do you know what a mayor is?
Ella: no, that's what makes it so funny!

Lily Scoots

I was sad when Ella brought home a flyer from school saying there was
going to be a free "skate night" while I was gone. I really wanted to
take the girls. Luckily for them, my mom & Trisha decided to take
them. Lily tried out a scooter for the first time.

The Show

Tyler making a sale to a shop owner from Singapore. He has a bit of
his dads salesmanship in him.

Happy Birthday Tyler

Here's a picture of Tyler emailing customers back, while sitting in
our hotel room. He works harder than anyone I know. Happy Birthday!

No Car

Tyler & I have been sharing a car for the past year and a half. I try not to have a bad attitude about it, but sometimes it's hard. Like today. I was supposed to leave 20 minutes ago. Lily is crying at the door to leave, but I don't have a car, and it's snowing outside. Or when Ella's school (a mile & 1/2 away) calls me to come pick Ella up early... but again, I have a 2 year old & no car. By the time we walk up there, school will be over anyhow.
Or the time I had to take a family of 9 a warm meal in another neighborhood, on a stormy night by 6pm, but again, I had 2 hungry tired kids who I'd have to walk with & a huge meal. I could hardly carry that large of a meal let alone 2 kids.
Anyhow, who thinks I should take some of the money I've saved from not having a car this month and buy this decor for my new home? I think it would really help my attitude. Don't you? Some sleep would probably help my attitude as well, but who has time for that?

A barf chart

*WARNING* The following post is not intended for people with weak stomachs.

Poor Ella got sick today. Tyler cleaned Ella up after she threw up all over herself, while I took her friends home. He mentioned to her that, sometimes, bigger kids throw up in the toilet so that they don't have to take a bath each time. A little while later, I saw/heard her in the bathroom. I was so proud of her for running to the bathroom instead of throwing up on the couch where she was sitting. She was quite proud of herself as well.

Ella: Mom, are you proud of me?
Me: Yes! Nice job Ella.
Ella: Can we make a throw up chart and put a smiley face on it every time I throw up and it's in the toilet?
Me: What if we just put a smiley face on your everyday chart?
Ella: No, I want a throw up chart.

Lily's favorite part of church

You might think that Lily's favorite part of church is the music that she loves to dance & sing to... but it isn't. Her favorite part, by far, happens to be the sustainings. She couldn't be happier raising her hand and looking around to see that everyone else is also raising their hands. The only thing that would make her happier is if everyone shouted “me” as they raised their hands.

Floor Plan

Here's our floor plan. It's not to scale, just a quick drawing I did from Memory. There's a small Bonus room upstairs.

Benefits of working at home

Sometimes it's hard to remember the benefits of working at home. Especially when you have equipment, exact-o knives, & glue everywhere. These types of things don't mix well with kids.

We have products, promotional materials, boxes, postcards, & business cards on every table, fireplace mantel, & flat surface.

Below is our dining room... yes our table is unusable & on it's side.

Our hallway (below) isn't usually this bad... but those of you who've been over to visit us in this house have probably seen similar scenes in our entry way. We usually try to keep it clear on a daily basis... but it always seems to collect boxes.

As you can see below, we are running out of room in our basement & garage for all our boxes, products & packaging. We don't like to stack the boxes on top of each other because we need to be able to get to them easily to “pick” our products on a routine basis.

Our business has officially taken over our entire house including our master bedroom (which is way too filled and embarrassing to show on a blog post.)
Ella & Lily's room are currently “business free.” However, they have not been spared from the effects of having a home business. Their bedrooms are where I send them and their friends to play when I'm afraid someone is going to knock over a display wall, run on top of some vinyl, destroy products, or cut themselves with an exact-o knife... Their rooms are possibly more of a mess than the rest of our house.

We are looking forward to our new house, where there will be a very large designated space just for our business.

Lunch with Tonya

My friend Tonya invited Emily and I over for a Picnic at her new house today. The kids loved her playroom which had a 2-story castle. They were also very excited to play with their friends that they hadn't seen since preschool ended last year. Ella hasn't stopped talking about her girls all afternoon. Emily and I enjoyed touring Tonya's beautiful house. We are completely jealous of her adorable craft room. Her entire house was decorated so lovely. We had such a great time visiting with Tonya. She's so nice, creative, & fun! Thanks Tonya.

Family

Tonight I had my aunt Syd & cousin Marcie over. I put them straight to work. They helped me put together notebooks & stickers on promotional material. They even tended my kids while Tyler and I ran up for a Stake Interview. It was really nice to have the extra help. I'm really feeling way less overwhelmed. The best part was hanging out with them & the fact that they were so nice to give up a night to help me out with nothing in return. You guys are the best! Thanks so much for your help. We should hang out again... but next time, let's do something better than work.

Our living room for the next week & 1/2

I know this isn't the best picture, it was taken at midnight, and all 12 light bulbs in our living room are burnt out. Despite the washed out picture... here's what part of our booth will look like! I still need to work on the layout, and finish cutting some of the images better, but this is what our potential customers will see. (It looks better in person.) We have 2 more walls just like this to put up. Those walls will hold all our products and card/scrapbook samples.
Ella has actually taken charge of the look for this booth, telling me where to put different images, cutting out images of her own & adding Velcro to them so she can put them where she wants. She also demands that I put sequins aligning our "Logo Sign" which isn't such a bad Idea, I might just do that. I'm hoping by next year she's old enough to take over this whole project by herself. I know she'd be willing ;)
Tyler and I are feeling pretty proud about this booth and the great deals we got thanks to EBAY!
When we were first looking at booths, we were finding that the cheapest booths were about $2,500 for one wall. To get graphics made to put on the wall were another $2,000. We got all 3 walls for WAY less than $1,000 TOTAL, and making the graphics ourselves cost us about $75.
Now I'm going to soak my bleeding & cracked hands (from cutting for 2 days straight) in Vaseline and wear some gloves to bed.

Ella's bus driver has a dog

Do you remember back a few months ago, when Ella got lost? It turned out she had just stayed on the school bus, never getting off. We asked her all about it at the time, but she always ignored us and wouldn't give us any clues about what happened. Yesterday, out of the blue, she finally started talking about her experience on the school bus. Without my questioning, she told me that the bus driver had gone to her home, locked the bus, and went into her house. Luckily she locked the bus, because it was at that time that Ella attempted to leave the school bus, but was unable to get the door open. After the school had called the bus driver to have her check the bus a 2nd time, Ella was finally found. Apparently the bus driver invited Ella into her house. The bus driver also had a cute little dog that jumped up onto Ella to play with her. Mystery solved.

Valentine Cards- Paypal Button Fixed, sorry!

I wanted to get some valentine cards printed for Ella to hand out to her school class... of course, you can't just have a few cards professionally printed... you have to order a whole bunch, so I'm offering my extra cards at cost to my blog readers, friends, & family. You can buy a set of 24 cards for $2.50, which is about 10 cents per card. You will receive: 24 Cards. 12 Elephant Valentine Cards & 12 Fairy Princess Cards (unless you'd like different amounts of each kind, just let me know.
Each card is 4" x 3" (inches).
Envelopes are not included.
Valentine cards are professionally printed on a heavy matte card stock.
The back of the cards are blank for you to write your message, or attach candy to.
If you would like to pick them up from me to save on shipping, let me know and I will refund your shipping cost.

Anyhow, I don't plan on turning my blog into a shopping infomercial, but I thought if you don't have a daughter who is set on handing out Hannah Montana Valentines this year, and you want to hand out cards that can't be found in the stores... I'd be happy to sell you my extras.

(You can purchase by clicking this "Add to Cart" button.

*Don't feel obligated, I know some friends were interested in getting a few, so I thought I'd post it on my blog in case anyone else was interested too.

-OR- you can enter to win some for free on my other blog.

No digging yet

Our house is coming along nicely. It's coming along slower than we had hoped for, but so much easier to build than our last house. I haven't had to dig any holes! Tyler has had more than his share of problems though. For example... they dug our hole wrong, but luckily Tyler got them to fix it (so that we didn't have to fix it by hand this time.) They laid the foundation forms wrong. Tyler spent almost 2 full days measuring to find the problem. They poured our foundation wrong, so we don't get a cute little curve on the outside of our house that we had planned (but oh well... stuff like that happens.)
Our temporary power box needed a new Circut Breaker... Home Depot & Lowes didn't carry one that would fit & pass code, Luckily Tyler knows how to make a circuit breaker. He was able to make one that fit & passed code. We also needed a certain size tube that we couldn't find anywhere! After searching the city, we finally decided to dumpster dive for one, then Tyler cut it to fit what we needed.
Today we headed over to the house to get some exact measurements so that our trusses will fit just right. Ella & Lily were excited to see their new bedrooms. It was fun for me to walk through the house and see what it will really look like. Tyler designed the plan almost 4 years ago... so I was curious to see how close it fit my imagination. We are getting great deals on some of the finishing touches & we can't wait to invite you all over once our house is finally done.
Tyler thinks it will be done in March. I am not as optimistic as he, and will be hoping for April or early May.

Peppermints in a row

Previously Lily put a sticky peppermint candy on my desk to dry.

Ella: Mom, I can't get this candy unstuck from your desk. Did Lily do this?
Me: Yes.
Ella: I hope we can get it unstuck, because it isn't very cute.
Me: Me too.
Ella: Actually, I have a better idea. I know how we can make it cute. What if you give me lots of peppermint candies, and I can lick them all then stick one here, and here, and here, and here, and here, so they all line up in a row. Would that be way cute? Can I have a peppermint candy?

2010

Tyler's parents, my mom, & Trisha have all helped watch our kids earlier this week so we could get ready for the trade show. Thank You ALL! Tonight we took a break from work and went to a Hawaiian New Years Eve party at our neighbors house. We only stayed until 9PM since Ella was tired and was ready to go to bed at 5:30PM. We had a great time eating dinner & playing games. We have some really fun neighbors. We are so glad we moved here and that we will stay in this ward when we move to our new house.

side note: Yes, as you can tell from my picture, Lily has obviously had access to my camera.