Homemade tomatoe cage...

We needed to get some tomatoe cages for our little tomatoe plants but I didn't want to spend money on them. So we decided to build our own "tomatoe cage" of sorts. We went to a heavily wooded place in the area and gathered a ton of sticks (over 50). Then we put together this cage and tied the junctions with bakers twine.

It's a pretty sturdy little structure. I love the natural, organic look of it. I'm trying to imagine it with 80 lbs of tomatoes on it... we'll see!

3 years...

It's now been three years since we lost this little baby boy. I still think about him everyday. I try to wonder what it would be like for my boy to have a little brother. But at the same time, I can't even imagine it. I still strongly believe in Heavenly Father's plan for our family and this is part of it. It is a pretty painful part of my life though. I used to wear a necklace with his initials and birthdate on it, have little reminders around about him. But I no longer do, not right now.  I wonder if the sting of losing this boy will lessen or go away when I have another baby. I was told right after we lost him that the best thing to do would be to get pregnant right away and have another baby. I wasn't able to do that, I'm still not able to do that {apparently}. So for three years there has been a hole in my heart where this boy resides. A hole that I have learned to live with.

I didn't want to just leave some cut flowers that I bought at the store on his headstone, so I bought some clay and made some little stones that we carved some words into. I also bought a clay colored pot and a succulent to leave by his grave, much more my style. I always had planned on naming a son Clayton (family name) and calling him Clay. But it seems so weird to give my dead baby a nickname, can you give dead children that never really grew into their name a nickname? I don't know, so we call him Clayton but I secretly call him Baby Clay in my mind. So the theme for me this year was clay...

My son carved his name on the back of one of the rocks. I thought that was cute. I asked Baby Clay at the cemetery if he could send down a sibling for his big brother. He didn't answer me, but I hope that with time he will. I will never forget the lessons I have learned from having an angel baby. I know that some day my pain will be replaced with great rejoicing when I get to see his face again. I'm grateful that I was able to help him fulfill his mission on earth which was to get a body. We sure love you Clayton!

Mother's Day...

I try to get a picture of me and my boy every year on Mother's Day. We were on our own yesterday though so I ended up trying to snap some pictures of us. The one above is the best one I got... the boy was not cooperating very well.

Here's what he does when I say "smile!"

Evil child smile...

Not sure why his hands are in his mouth...

 Husband made me breakfast in bed before he left for work. We went to church. Then we bummed around and watched movies and ate peanut butter cookie dough with chocolate chips. It was kind of a rough Mother's Day. I'm so thankful to be a mother, I love this little guy so much, but I think that so many of us women out there have a little sting associated with Mother's Day. I have a hard time with Clayton's birthday being so close to Mother's Day (it's within two days this year). I decided to go to the cemetery, something I have not done since we moved back up here. I think that next year on Mother's Day I wont do that, it was just too hard. It was hard in lots of ways, one being that my boy is four and asking lots and lots of questions. I tried to explain to him who his brother is, why he died, showed him pictures. It was just very emotionally taxing for me. Then the wonder if this little boy I have will be my only real shot at motherhood in this life. I want to embrace that and be the best mom that I can be to him, but it's hard. I try not to "want what I don't have" but on Mother's Day, I do.

While at the cemetery I noticed that several of my in laws had been there to pay tribute to their mother who has passed away. Another sting of Mother's Day, mom's who are gone, and no longer with their kids. It made me hug my boy tighter and be grateful that I am here, I still get to be his mom. I get to enjoy his laughter and wipe his dirty fingers and face everyday. I am a lucky, lucky mom!! So lots different emotions to deal with on Mother's Day for me this year. I think that women just feel emotions so deeply and personally, it makes "special" days like this a little more delicate. At the end of the day this is what I determined made my Mother's Day a great day:

 - I get to be mom to the most handsome little 4 year old!
 - I got to visit with my own mom and spend some time with her. I'm lucky and thankful to have my mom around and to have a good relationship with her.
 - I thought about all the different women who have been mother's to me. So many of them that I am in no way related to, but they have filled this mother roll for me in different times of my life. Women can mother regardless of who they have given birth to. One of these women is a nurse named Sally that I worked with in Las Vegas. She was my ER mom and I made sure to send her a card for mother's day this year to show my love and appreciation for her.

I hope that you all had a wonderful Mother's Day this year and can feel content and happy in whatever mothering capacity you hold in your life right now.

Garden...

We really wanted to find a house we could rent that had enough land that we could plant a garden (I know, tall requests for renters). We were so happy to find this house and the landlords were more than willing to let us take up some of the sod and plant a garden. We wanted to get our seeds in the ground pretty quick so this is a run down of how moving week went:

Monday - Emptied out our storage unit and move all of the contents up to the house.

Tuesday - Get all of our stuff out of my in law's house. Clean my in law's basement where we had been staying. Spend our first night in the new place.

Wednesday - Husband wakes up bright and early and maps out where he wants to put the garden. We wanted 3 beds that were 5 x 30 feet. Unpack and put stuff away. That night, rent a sod cutter from Home Depot and pull up all the sod. Fill up our truck and drive the sod down to my sister in laws who can use it.

Thursday - Husband goes back to work. I spend my day trying to get things unpacked and put away.
Friday - Still unpacking. Almost done. Buy all the seeds for the garden.
Saturday - Borrow grandparents tiller. Till the whole garden area and till in fertilizer. Mow the massive lawn (I did this, it took 2 1/2 hours... and I was already super exhausted from everything else. Had my first doubts about moving into this place with the massive yard!). Plant our garden!!!

We were all moved in with a garden planted in 6 days!!! It was nuts, and I was so exhausted by the end of the week! I can't believe that we did all that in such a short amount of time. But we were able to get our garden that we've been dreaming about put in.

Here's what we planted:

Spaghetti squash

Butternut squash

Zucchini

Crook neck squash

White beans

Green beans

Three kinds of tomatoes

Swiss Chard

Beets

Watermelon (not sure if this will grow, but wouldn't it be cool if it did?)

Green leaf lettuce

Spinach

Sugar snap peas

Cilantro

Mint

Basil

Peppers

Pumpkin

Sunflowers!!

Our little plants are starting to poke through the ground now, we are so excited! I hope that some of this stuff grows, that would be so cool!

Charming...

We're all moved in and starting to get more settled. I love this place so much. It just feels good, and feels like home. "Fits like a glove" is something that keeps coming to mind over and over again. This place fits our little family like a glove.

I feel like I'm going to be hit by a truck... because it just is working out so well, it feels a little too good to be true! (My husband reminds me that I do have to wash dishes by hand and I do have to mow the ginormous lawn with a walk behind mower... so it's not too good to be true). Is this really my life? Do I really get to live here? I'm just so amazed that this crazy plan we had really worked out. That we are really home, my husband really found a job, and we are really living in this beautiful place nestled by the mountains. With trees, and grass, and dew in the mornings. I feel undeserving of being so happy. But I also feel like the way that everything has fallen into place so nicely and the people and situations that have been put in our path that we are exactly where we need to be right now. Where we want to be. Where God wants us to be. We've been very, very blessed and I am very grateful for that.

This little home we are in is oozing with charm. So many things to fall in love with here. Here are a few sneak peaks of the charm of this little pioneer home.

Lets start with the doors shall we? They don't make door knobs like this anymore. I wonder if I can get a skeleton key somewhere that will work in these old knobs...

Glass windows above the doors that actually open...

And tiny pioneer sized doors (husband has to duck under this one)...

View through the sky light in the kitchen. Hello walnut tree...

And my favorite feature yet, 130 year old root cellar. It's beautiful...

Walnut shells galore from the walnut tree. I think we are going to have to make some walnut boats with these (and if any of you want to make walnut boats come on over, we have a ton).

Pretty snowballs...

I have a lot to do to get the inside settled more. We need a couch, we are couchless right now. We left our last couch in a dumpster in Vegas, it was time for it to go to the junkyard. I also need to make some curtains, some little book shelves for the boy's room, figure out where to hang pictures, and other odds and ends like that.

But we are here, and very happy to be here. I'm sure I will share more of the pioneer house in the future, since she's quite the charmer...

April showers...

April is coming quickly to an end! Great things are in store for us in May... I can hardly wait! But here is what is going at the end of April.

:: I'm loving the weather this month in Utah! Beautiful sunny days mixed with cloudy rainy days. I keep saying "April showers bring May flowers" as I enjoy listening to the rain when it comes. I've missed the rain a lot. Nevada... not a lot of rain there. Makes me think of my days in Hawaii where it rains everyday.

:: Before I forget, I did have my cancer scans done this month and met with my new oncologist. I LOVE HIM!!! Such a wonderful change from my last doctor. He isn't having me do PET scan's anymore, just CT scans which is so nice! And the scan said that my lymph nodes look great! Pretty happy about that.

:: WE MOVE TOMORROW!!!! I can't even begin to express how excited I am about this. We got the keys on Thursday and will be unloading our storage unit tomorrow. I'll show some pictures of the charm of this place soon. I love it more and more each time I go up there.


:: Speaking of our storage unit... we fit all of our stuff in a 10x10 unit for the past 6 months. We really don't have very much stuff, but what we do have I have really missed! I'm mostly looking forward to finding my box of shoes and sleeping in my bed again.

:: Running a half marathon is in the works for this summer. My best friend Corinne is going to run it with me. We've found a race that will work with our summer plans and drove the course last week. It's going to be hard, but I've always wanted to do one... now is the time! I'm on the lookout for some good running shoes. I think I might go with these ones, but I need to try them on in a store before I order them. Somehow in the middle of moving next week I need to get some ordered... the long runs are getting closer and closer! I can barely do 3 miles straight right now so it's going to be a challenge.

That's about it for now. I might not have internet for a little while when we get things set up at our new place. Excited for this fresh start!

 image

Home...

I've always daydreamed about living in a little quaint cottage somewhere in the mountains. I have a pinterest board dedicated to the cute little homes that I find. I showed them to my husband once and said, "I want to live in a little home in the mountains someday like these." His response was, "Do you realize how little those houses are? They are really really small." Yes, yes they are. I don't know, I've never wanted to be in some huge house somewhere (mostly because I don't want to have to clean it). There is just something that draws me to these little cottage homes. So cozy, so cute, so homey.

Well, I have some rather exciting news!!! (It's exciting to me anyway). We are going to be moving in about 2 weeks to a cute tiny home!! It's not up in the mountains, but it's right next to some mountains, and we are so super excited about this. It's much closer to my husband's new job (he's been commuting about 75 minutes to and from work each day) and it has a large yard with fruit trees and room we can garden. The house is pretty tiny, under 1000 square feet. And it's almost 130 years old! It was a pioneer home built by some of the Mormon pioneers in the late 1800's. It's been updated since then (no outhouse mind you...  but still no dishwasher) with big windows that let in the light, still very tiny. And cute. And perfect for our small family at this time in our lives. Nice and cozy but with a large yard that we can spend time together in the great outdoors. We are so excited!!!

I'm going to have to buckle down and get pretty organized so that we can fit our stuff in there, but it will be a good move for our family. I can feel it. It feels good to be excited about something like this. Time to start packing up my stuff at my in laws and start fresh somewhere new!

Home 1, 2, 3

Night in the desert...

Beautiful blue skies

Cows in every shade of brown imaginable

Quenching their thirst in the desert

Colorful Philly cheese steak sandwiches with orange and yellow peppers

Dutch oven style of course

Good friends

Good conversation

Perfect evening

Easter...

Two egg hunts made for a very happy little boy this weekend.

I love this orangcicle shirt that I found for Easter Sunday. He looked so darling in it if I do say so myself. Favorite find in his Easter basket? Silly putty. Hasn't stopped playing with it since.

And just to keep it real... right after I took these pictures he dropped his silly putty and it rolled down the driveway. He dove for it and ripped a big hole in his church pants... but saved the putty!! So my favorite gray church pants of his went into the trash and he wore black ones instead. I  try not to get mad at him for just being a little boy, but sometimes I'm sad at how fast we go through clothes around here.

Beautiful holiday... one of my favorites. I love the spring smell that is in the air right now. Reminders of life are all around us this time of year. Which is really what Easter is all about right? Life... we will live again. I truly believe this.

Antlers...

I've been on the lookout for some good antlers since I saw this photo and fell in love. I've been wanting to recreate this look for our bedroom as a symbol of our marriage (post about that here). With my husband being a hunter along with his brothers, friends, grandfather... I was sure that someone had a set of antlers sitting around that would work for the job.

Around Christmas time we were in his friends barn while they were working on some projects. Husband said, "Remember how you wanted to find some antlers? Go look over on the rafters." So I walked to the back of the barn and saw the most beautiful antlers hanging from the beams. They were perfect!

"Whose antler's are these?" I asked. Then husband reminded me of something I had long since forgotten about. They were his antlers!! The last time that he went hunting before we moved from Utah 7 years before he had gotten a deer on the muzzleloader hunt. They were his antlers! The only ones that he had gotten in our marriage so far. That made them all the more meaningful to me. 

 Hunting tag still in place. I can't believe that I had forgotten about these antlers. His friend had been keeping them safe in his barn for all these years that we have been gone. He had planned on mounting them for Trent but never got around to doing it. I'm grateful that while I have the hunter/fisher/gatherer husband who acquires such items as antlers, he's not opposed to handing them right over to his wife to get all crafty with them.

I'm holding off on making the clay flowers for now, I think I will tackle this project when we move in a few weeks. But I'm very excited to get this project underway. I think it's going to be beautiful!

And just for nostalgia's sake... here are some old picture that are from that hunting trip back in 2004.

Ready to go out hunting...

 Horseback riding in the mountains {gosh I look young}...

Husband with his deer {promise this is the only time I will show a picture of a dead animal on my blog... unless it's a fish}.

Two years...

Today marks two years since my last chemo treatment... a day to be celebrated for sure. I wanted to take my picture again like I did during that first year after chemo, but my dining room table has been in storage for the past 4 1/2 months and I'm far away from my cute little condo in Las Vegas. So I borrowed my sister in law's table and wall, which are very similar to mine (you have good taste Nicole). I actually flipped the pictures on the computer so that the hallway would be on the right side like it was in my condo. Tricky tricky. I'm grateful to have these pictures to look back on and remember how far I've come in the last two years. I'm starting to look like me again. My hair is almost as long as it was before I lost it. I'm getting better at running and starting to get the muscle tone back that I lost.


This past year of being in remission for lymphoma has been interesting. I had a pet scan done last April which was good and clean, but my health insurance decided not to cover it because they said it wasn't "medically necessary". I was told by my doctor that I needed to have a scan done every year for five years to be sure that it didn't come back. So I spent a good part of last year appealing this denied claim from my health insurance company. In October I received news that they decided to cover the scan, which we were super grateful for (pet scans run about $4500 without insurance). And here we are again... April is here and it's scan time again. I've found a new oncologist and will be getting another scan later this month. Fingers crossed {as always} that it will be clean. If it's clean at this two year mark chances are super slim that it will ever come back.


Something I've been thinking about a lot lately is how so many people are starting to turn against westernized medication. The trend is turning towards natural remedies, homeopathics, etc. While I too like these forms of healing and medical treatment and use them fairly regularly, I also am so grateful for the advances we have in this day with medications. Chemotherapy saved my life. It was brutal, it took me to a low I didn't think was possible... but it worked, and it was worth it. Every morning when my little boy climbs into bed for "family cuddles" I'm reminded that it was worth it. Every time I get to spend time with my family or spend time out in nature I'm reminded that it was worth it. Every time I lay down on the floor after a hard workout and feel my heart pounding inside of my chest (right next to where my cancer used to live) I'm reminded that it was worth it, my heart can still pound inside my chest because of it.

It didn't come without a price, but I still get to be here with my family because I chose to fill my body with toxic chemicals that killed my cancer. It was worth it.

There definitely have been lasting side affects from such a treatment. Before I had my first of 12 treatments my nurse sat me down and went over all the possible side affects for ONE HOUR!!! It was so daunting, not knowing what shape I would be in when all was said and done. But the understanding was that these side affects were a small price to pay to be able to live the rest of my life with my husband and son. Now that I'm two years out, here are the side affects that I've noticed have actually stuck...

Circulation problems: I have Raynaud's phenomenon in my hands and feet since chemo. One drug I was given called bleomycin seems to be the cause of this. It wasn't a very big problem down in Vegas because it doesn't get too cold there, but here in Utah it's a whole different story. I've learned that I can not let my hands and feet get cold. Period. When they get even a little bit cold the blood stops flowing to them and it's super painful. They also seem to get cold way more often than they did before. I wear socks at all times unless I'm in the shower. I no longer can step on cold tile floors. I put gloves on before I open the door to go outside. Another strange part of this is when I've let my hand or feet get cold, when they warm up they itch like crazy. I had a few weeks this winter where I was sure that my cancer had come back because my hand and feet would not stop itching (unexplained itching is also a sign of Hodgkin's lymphoma). Thankfully though, once I learned to not let my extremities get cold the itching stopped. I'm planning on making some of these for next winter and having plenty of warm clothing to get me through the cold months.

Taste: I was told that my taste buds might change. That food would taste different during and after chemo. The biggest change that I've noticed here is that I didn't like spicy food before and now I love it! Hot sauce has become a staple in my house. Another thing I noticed is that I no longer like to eat french fries or especially curly fries. Mostly because they taste like chemo to me... no thank you.

Fertility:this article a while back which lists which chemo drugs can play a factor in female fertility and two of the drugs I was given are on the intermediate risk section (adriamycin and bleomycin). I have hope though, I do. But this is a sore spot for me, so we will leave it at this. I'm planning on having some good answers on this one by the end of this year... hopefully my answer comes in the form of a baby ;).

Lung capacity: This one has gotten better as time has gone on, but I have a hard time singing and running because I don't feel like I can breath or take big breaths. Normal breathing is fine, but times where my lung strength is tested it does not do as well as it did before chemo.

Metabolism and Fatigue: I still struggle with being tired all the time. I get great sleep every night but wake up tired and am tired all day. I also can not seem to loose the weight that I gained during chemo and have put on even more. If I'm not actively trying to lose weight then I'm gaining it (and I don't lose it when I'm trying to either, I just stay the same). So frustrating. I'm going to have my doctor check my thyroid to see if something has happened with that from chemo, but these are things that have been very frustrating for me. A girl likes to feel her best you know... and I'm not quite there yet.

Even with all of the above going on in my life now, it was worth it. I'm so grateful to be here, I know that it's a privilege and one that I try to not take for granted. I'm grateful for second chances. I'm grateful for modern medicine. I'm grateful that I had the opportunity to be a mom before this event occurred in my life. I'm grateful for life!!!

Wooden rainbow...

My sister in law always decorates super cute for the holiday's. This year for St. Patrick's Day she wanted to find a rainbow to add to her decor, but wasn't able to find something that she loved by the time the holiday came and went. When I spotted this wooden rainbow on Pinterest I knew that we had to do it (yes, me included because I need to be better at decorating for holidays ;) ). One of my goals this year on my list is to get more into woodworking and learn to use different saws and this was the perfect project to get started with that.

Another thing about my sister in law, she is really good at following through with her projects. I went over to her house last week to just "talk" about the rainbow. Nicole does not just sit and talk about projects, she gets right on it! In the next few hours we had found a wood shop that carried wood 2 1/2 inches thick that we needed (can't buy wood like that at Home Depot...) and we had gone down there and bought our wood. The trip involved taking 4 kids with us down this industrial ally and me climbing a ladder and walking on some plywood floor in a warehouse to get our wood... yikes!!! I lived to tell the tale though and we now have some awesome rainbows!!

My father in law has lots of wood working tools so we got together Saturday to cut out the rainbows. We ended up making four, and it went super smooth. The tutorial says to mark the arches at 1/2 an inch, but when I traced it out it looked way too small. So we went with 3/4 and inch for each arch.

Me working the band saw...

Hubs on the sander...

They looked so pretty just raw wood too...

This week we got together and painted the arches. We used these water color paints from Michaels. They worked really well.

 Two coats of paint and then we set them to dry.

 We sealed them off with beeswax which really made the colors vibrant. And here is my final product...

I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I really love it. I love that by using watercolors you can still see the wood grain through the paint. I love that my boy LOVES playing with it. My only complaint is that I'm not completely happy with the 2nd and 3rd from the bottom arches. I think I might switch those two colors around, but I'm not sure that I care enough to sand them down and re-paint them. 

 Now I have a cute rainbow for St. Patrick's Day and a fun toy for my boy to play with in the meantime. Very worthwhile project!!

New camera...

We were completely surprised this year with a great tax return (I was so not expecting that...). Most went to paying for my lovely pile of old medical bills, but we needed to get one little "treat" didn't we? My plea was somewhere along the lines of "we need to be able to document our child's life..." and it worked!
So we got a new camera!!! It came in the mail yesterday and I really love it. I found this list of the 10 best point and shoot cameras for 2012 and went with the #1 choice. I found the best price at Target. This camera fit my list of wants with being completely affordable and still take good, clear pictures.

I used to think that I wanted a fancy Nikon or Canon DSLR camera but then one day I realized that I do not need a fancy camera like that. I'm not a photographer and have no intentions of every becoming one. All I need is a camera to snap pictures of my cute boy and husband that will fit in my purse and that would make me happy as can be. So I'm very happy with my purchase. And on the plus side... it's much easier to blog when you have a camera ;).

My boy asked what I wanted to take a picture of with my new toy (he's a smart boy) and I said that I wanted a picture of his big blue eyes and little nose that's speckled with freckles. Yes he's sweaty and flushed from the park and has a dirty face (always) but oh those blue eyes...