The Solomon Family

This weekend is Edges, the musical review show that I've been working on in class this semester.  It will run this Thursday through Saturday only.  It's a song cycle about growing up and finding out who you really are and what you want to do.  I've found the meanings of the songs to be very deep at times and quite comical at others.  I'm excited for everyone to get to see how hard we've all been working!

I recently auditioned for, was cast in, and started practice for the community theatre show this summer, Little Shop of Horrors.  I'll be playing Crystal, a character that acts like a muse/Greek chorus type person; I'm part of the story but not at the same time.  So far it looks like it's going to be really good!  It will be playing the two weekends around Pioneer Day (July 24). 

Like most of the world, I have become addicted to Pinterest!  I started out just looking for pictures that would help me get ideas for photo shoots, but it has since blossomed into multiple boards including hair ideas, recipes, things I'd like to have, and home ideas.  I've probably wasted a good portion of my life on this site already, haha!  However, it hasn't all been for naught! 

While browsing through all of the wonderful photos I came across this photo:

Date Night in a Jar http://www.lifeinthegreenhouse.com/2012/02/date-night-in-jar.html

I already had a "Things I'd Like To Have" board that was filled with things like shoes and t shirts so I added this picture to it.  Over time the board has become a lot of craft things that I'd like to try as well.  Anyway, back on topic, I pinned the picture and thought "someday I'll become crafty and this will be one of the things that I make" and kept browsing. 

Over the next however long I kept seeing the picture on my board and thinking about how much I'd like to have my own "date night in a jar."  Jake and I always do the exact same thing for date night (Denny's and movie) and I was getting really bored with it, so much that I didn't even really like going out any more.  So while I was at the dollar store one day I bought a packet of Popsicle sticks and decided to make one! 

I used an old mason jar that I already had (Vicky always gives us a couple jars of the elk that Ronnie gets during hunting season, yummy!) and some paints that Mom had in the store room and went to town.  I used some of the original designers date ideas and Jake and I came up with some of our own.  Since we're pretty broke most of the time we have more "cheap/free" sticks to choose from.
 

Red= $$ & planning, Blue= $ & little planning, Yellow= little to no $ and no planning, Green= filler

Our first date that we used this for turned out to be four-wheeling.  We borrowed Vicky's quad and left Aaralyn to play with her Grandma and Grandpa and went out one Friday afternoon and had a blast!  Overall, I'd say that it was a great success, I think everyone should have one of these, haha! 


I've also been salivating over pictures of food that have been posted on Pinterest and I finally made a board for my own little cook book.  So far I've made five of the dishes that I have pinned, but I only have pictures of four of them.  (The homemade oreo's always taste really good but I'm still experimenting on how thick to make the cookie part.) 

The casserole Belinda and I made together for girl's night, as well as the Reese's bars. We also watched the clean flicks version of Shakespeare In Love, it was great fun! My busy schedule is the only reason that we haven't done it again.

I believe I made the spotify icon at the top of the page a link to my Pinterest if you want to check it out!

Oatmeal Butterscotch Bars (Minus the frosting on top) http://www.sweettreatsmore.com/2012/03/oatmeal-butterscotch-bars-with-brown.html

Ham and Cheese Sliders on homemade rolls http://www.the-girl-who-ate-everything.com/2010/04/ham-and-cheese-sliders.html

Reese's Peanut Butter Bars http://michellestastycreations.blogspot.com/2012/03/reeses-peanut-butter-bars.html

Twice Baked Potato Casserole http://www.tasteofhome.com/Recipes/Twice-Baked-Potato-Casserole

I had originally planned to only take one class with Mom and Belinda this semester, but when that didn't work out I ended up taking three to have the same amount of credits so I could keep my grant money.  It's not a bad thing though;  I'm in two choir classes that meet twice a week and the spring musical that meets on the day in between them.  It's been lots of fun.  It will also help me gain experience for what I've finally decided to do school wise- I will get my associates of arts degree here at NPC and then transfer to U of A to get my bachelor's in musical theatre, if that's still what I want to do when it's time to transfer, haha!

Jake is taking the metal art class that he's been wanting to do for over a year now.  He's very talented!  He likes to make custom knives and he's making armour in his class right now.  One of his teachers is Howard Noble, a world renown and much sought after metal smith mostly known for his armour skills.  He loves Jake too; he recently offered to take Jake on as his apprentice and hand his business down to him when he retires.  He also asked if Jake would like to train with him to enter competitions kind of like they did in the middle ages, sword fighting and such.  He even asked if Jake would be interested in getting a degree in metal art and then teaching at the college.  Needless to say, Jake was very thankful and told him that he would think about all of it. 

Jake's "bucket" helmet

Since my first attempt at putting up decorations was rudely interrupted by a trip to the hospital (haha!), today I finally was able to get everything done, for the most part :)  Of course I wouldn't have been able to do it without my helpers- Jake and Tye! 

Some of the Christmas village got put on top of the piano.

Close up shot of the nativity.

The candy land/ Santa village in the kitchen.

The garland over the entertainment center with some more village in the highlighted cupboards.

Close up shot of part of the village in the entertainment center.

I still have two garlands to put up on the stair rails to finish the inside of the house.  I didn't take any pictures of the outside lights because it's still light outside and they wouldn't have shown up :)  But Jake and Jace got those done on Saturday and they look awesome!  The other kids helped out a little on Saturday as well, but the prospect of their niece maybe coming into the world that night pretty much killed any decorating that they were doing, haha!

We were adventurous and made carmel apples for the football team as a treat for them doing so well this season.  It was definitely an experience, haha!  Here's how they turned out:

I think they look great, it took a little bit to figure out how to get the dipping carmel to work since it was all homemade! 

This year we had great fun for Halloween!  I wanted to make jack-o-lanterns with my siblings so we did :) We made three, one with the scary smile, one with a graveyard, and one traditional toothy smiling pumpkin face.  The traditional one wouldn't show up in the picture when it was lit though, I don't know if it was the candle that I put in or if I didn't cut it well enough, but they all looked great lit up on Halloween night :)

I had decided quite a while before October that I was going to pain my belly for my costume so I only needed some paint to get fixed up.  We bought Jake's scary skeleton jester costume about a week before Halloween and then on Halloween Day we realized that no one else in the family had costumes!  So we dug through some old costume pieces and stage makeup and came up with the following for Kysee, Callista, and Tye.  I think everything worked out great!

"Mad Scientist"

"Tiger" and "Mummy"

"Mike Wazowski"

"Skeleton Jester"

My only complaint about this year's Halloween was that no one gave out any good candy!  I seriously got a bunch of dum dum suckers and bubble gum and that was it.  Talk about disappointment, especially for a pregnant woman craving something with lots of sugar in it.  Overall it was pretty fun though :)

Happy October everyone!  I hope you enjoy our Halloween themed blog for the next couple of weeks, it will most likely become Thanksgiving themed after that, then Christmas themed, and then it will probably get plastered with pictures of Aaralyn after that!  I can't believe she's going to be here that soon!

Speaking of Aaralyn, I had my 30 week appointment this Thursday.  Everything was looking really good, her heart rate was 144 and Wendy said she believes that Aaralyn has already flipped over and is head down.  The only concerning thing was something that I brought up; that morning Aaralyn had moved very oddly, different than anything I'd felt before in a bad way.  The only way I know how to describe it is to say that it felt like she was having a seizure.  It happened twice and she hadn't moved for a while afterwords, I had to really poke and prod her to get her moving again.  Wendy didn't seem overly concerned but told me to go to the hospital to get checked if I felt it again.  A couple hours later I felt it again, not quite as strong, and went to the hospital.  They monitored me for a little bit and said that the baby looked really good and that I could go home.  I probably wouldn't have been upset except that one of the nurses didn't really take me seriously and told me that the baby moves around and that I was fine.  Anyone who has experienced pregnant hormones knows that saying that probably wasn't the greatest thing to do.  I felt like she just thought I was stupid and over reacting and I cried all the way home I was so upset about it (once again, I wonder how in the world Jake puts up with me lately).  I guess I was just upset because I've been feeling Aaralyn move for around four months now and this wasn't normal for her and no one except Wendy seemed to understand that!  She's been moving around a lot since then though so I do believe that she's alright.  On the plus side though, I found out that I get to have another ultrasound around 35 weeks to make sure that everything is good to go for delivery- hopefully Aaralyn is still a girl, haha! 

Jake and I had an awesome "stay at home date" last night, complete with Chinese take-out, ice cream, and the new Transformers movie.  It was a lot of fun :) We always do the same thing for date night since there isn't a whole lot to do on the mountain so it was a nice change for us- and half the cost of our normal dates! 

We've been slowly getting Aaralyn's room ready.  So far it's painted, the crib/changing table is put together, and all of her clothes that we have already are in the closet with her car seat and stroller.  For anyone who may be wondering, it's looking like there will be a baby shower the first week of December, as long as that continues to work out for everyone!  I'm just grateful that someone wants to throw us one.  We feel so blessed and lucky that everyone seems to want to help us out so much.  Everyone keeps asking what colors or theme we want/have and honestly we don't have any.  If someone wants to give us something we're just grateful for that, it doesn't matter to us if everything matches or not!  Thank you so much, to everyone, you are all awesome! 

I am officially entering the home stretch of pregnancy, the third trimester!  I've graduated from a doctor's visit every month to one every couple of weeks, I've gotten all of my vaccinations (the flu shot wasn't near as bad as the tdap!), I've started some hard-core cleaning (much to Jake's dismay!), and I've noticed some changes in my body that point towards December becoming ever closer.  And it feels like time is just flying right by me!

At my check-up yesterday I had my sugar tested, but I haven't heard anything back on that yet.  Hopefully I passed and I'm still in the clear!  Wendy said that Aaralyn's heart-rate was about 150 and I'm measuring right in between 27 and 28 weeks, which is good since I'm technically not even a full 27 weeks yet and everything had been measuring a couple days behind.  I'm sort of hoping that I'll have her early; I feel like having your birthday on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day is not fair.  I'd rather she had her own special day to celebrate.  Since I don't want to be induced I just have to hope that she's done cooking early!  I found out that there's a full moon on December 10.... we'll see what happens! 

Last Tuesday I really got the living room cleaned good.  We had to rearrange some stuff though.  Aaralyn's room is currently our kitchen (that we never use) so the table and a couple of other things had to be moved into the living room.  Jake pretty much moved everything, I couldn't have done it without him!  I've been feeling kind of sick lately and I have anxiety attacks when I think about cleaning because I don't know where to start- there's so much to do!  He's been such a great help to me, taking care of everything and helping me to relax.  I'm sort of sad that he was finally able to go back to work this week, I miss having him around all the time!  Anyway, after the living room was finished, we decided to hold off a little on Aaralyn's room.  We don't have anything to put in it yet except for a chair and the room needs to be painted still.  I guess that will become a project for another day.  Yesterday I tackled our bathroom.  It was nasty, that's all I have to say about it.  But now it smells like Pinesol (my favorite!) and it gleams like a bathroom in a magazine, haha!  Today I'm hoping to get our massive amount of laundry done, we'll see how that goes though. 

We have gotten a few presents from the family already, mostly clothes.  Mom got Aaralyn some ladybug themed things, since her nickname was Lacey-bug.  My favorite is the monkey dressed as a ladybug because Aaralyn moves so much that I feel like she's a monkey in the making!

School has been going well for both Jake and I.  Grease is moving right along, as well as my choir classes.  I can't believe that when it's all over I'll be ready to have a baby.  It's a little frightening to me, haha!  As nervous as Jake and I both are, we're also ready to have her here finally so we can love her to death!    

Tomorrow Jake and I go back to school for the fall semester. Jake will still be working so he's decided to focus on his Pharmacy Technician class and not take any others until next semester when he has more time. I, however, am taking 15 credit hours worth of classes! It seems like a lot when I think of it that way, haha! Six of my credits will be earned online though so I don't think it will be too bad. I was originally only going to take 12 credits but a couple of things changed that. The theatre department gave me a scholarship and invited me out to audition for Grease as part of it. I got cast as an extra/chorus member (not surprising since I'll be 8 months pregnant when we perform it!) and given an extra job as the stage manager. Because I got cast I have to enroll in another 3 credit theatre class that the rehearsals will take place in. I'm actually quite excited about it; I haven't been in a show for around 2 years and I miss the fun and work of it all. I posted a video of my audition piece on my book blog Midnight Magic for Music Monday, check it out if you want!

This Sunday I decided to take part in the indexing program that the church has. It's pretty much just reading the original document and recording the information for the official church records. Each record is checked by multiple people and boy am I thankful for that! The first couple of records I got were easy enough to read and then, bam! It was like I had forgotten how to read or something! They probably won't want to send me anything anymore after they get my latest attempt at "helping," haha! I guess right now the big project is the 1871 census from England. All I can say is that there are probably some people laughing over my interpretations somewhere. I did get a pretty good laugh out of it though; there was a box for the census taker to write down if the person was an "imbecile or idiot" among other options. I didn't realize they actually labeled people like that back then, haha!