Ashley Thalman is a photo goddess!

One of my bestest stumbled upon blog-finds has been Ashley Thalman. For some insane reason this amazing photographer ran a portfolio building special for a 90 minute session for $75 including all image rights. Holy cow! So yeah, we took her up on that. I'm not going to post very many of them right now, but how beautiful is this one?

Oh, and this one! Ahhh...

I am so glad we did this with her, she just let us be ourselves and that is totally what I wanted, nothing posed, just us playing, and I couldn't be more pleased with how they turned out.

Two birds...One stone

As I mention later in the post, I am having a rough time with time lately. I wrote my parents an email that turned out to be a decent recap of our lives right now, and will share here for anyone who cares. Here is how we are:
Matt- very, very, very busy. The end of the month is always quite hectic for him, but this month was a joke. He keeps thinking that his business is going to slow down, what with the crappy housing market, but it just isn't! The Lord is blessing him/us SOOOO much right now. Matt is honest and does his best, but he also (and I think that this is why the Lord is being so generous right now..) doesn't really bend over backward for people like a lot of others in his industry do. Not in a bad way, but he just really tries to make sure that after work hours, he is home. A lot of times people will want him to work crazy hours, and do things after hours, but he just doesn't do it, and I appreciate it so much. It really feels like the real-life version of that scripture about the windows of heaven being opened and pouring out so many blessings that you don't even have room to receive them. Oh, and the fact that we have a couple of faithful missionaries out doesn't hurt either. :)
Sawyer- 95% potty-trained!!!! Once I was consistent with it, it really was easy and quick! There is one method that I learned from...... you guessed it! BabyWise that really turned the whole thing around. It's interesting, instead of having ALL the emphasis being on when they successfully use the potty, periodically throughout the day, you have them check to see if they are dry, and for the first few days also check to see if their potty-training doll or bear or whatever is dry. Once they get that the goal here is to stay dry, it only takes them a little bit to realize that if they want to get rewarded for staying dry, the way to accomplish that is to use the potty instead. It's like a light just clicked on over her head when I started to emphasize this. (One danger of this method, however, is having your daughter come up to you while you're talking to someone you don't really know, and putting her little hand on your crotch and asking "mommy, are you dry??" Hilarious now, but quite embarrassing at the time!) Anyway, that is the potty training secret. But you probably knew that already, huh, Mom? Sawyer and I went to cousin Caroline's dance concert tonight, and I have never seen Sawyer that excited and attentive in my entire life!!! This little girl got her Grandma Miller's dancing genes. I knew that she would like to see Caroline on stage, but I could not believe how intensely she was loving all the dancing! I wish I'd have had my camera. Actually I'll bring it tomorrow night, I'm doing Caroline's makeup again & we'll stay for the first part this time, because we missed it tonight. I hope I get some decent pictures.
And Me- I am loving my new calling in the Young Women's. It's a little intense, both emotionally and time-consuming-wise, but I love these girls soooo much already. We are having a Book of Mormon reading challenge, and I'm trying desperately to catch up to them, so I'm reading more consistently and better than I think I ever have in my life and it has been wonderful. I really am solidifying my testimony more each time I read, and although I have always had a ton of faith in the Book of Mormon, my knowledge is really growing. Better late than never, I guess. I'm just really loving it! Also, I am really really getting clucky, I want to be pregnant so bad and everywhere I go I see big round bellies. I know that I shouldn't be so anxious about it, we haven't even been trying that long, it's just that I am soooo excited to meet this next kid! And so is Sawyer, I'm afraid! Also, I am very excited for Matt's birthday next week, (the 11th) and it is a secret, so that is all I will say right now, but trust me, it's gonna be good! I've put alot of work into making it a surprise, so I hope, hope, hope that I can pull it off. However, I am having a problem prioritizing my life right now. I spent a few hours last night trying to get to sleep, but I just kept thinking about how to find balance in my life. I have so many balls up in the air right now, things I'd like to do, things I should do and things I must to, and I feel like in order to do well in any of them I have to fail others, and it is very frustrating. Moderation in all things really is the key isn't it? But man is it ever hard to find that balance. Anyone have any secrets??? Even right now, I'm thinking of a hundred other things I need to be doing in my down time. That is why I'm going to use this email as a blog post and kill two birds with one stone.

latest blog-stalking find

so, I must confess something scandalous right now... I am addicted to blog-stalking. I have stumbled upon numerous fun and fantastic blogs and, subscribed to their feeds and now have all these unwitting pseudo-friends that I love. Occasionally I might comment on their blogs, but usually I just find comfort in the fact that we are all basically the same, no matter how far apart or how differently we live. But, tonight I have to share with you one of my favorites: Tartlette. A french transplant pastry chef who does amazing things with food and a camera. She's adorable. And so are these.... So if you get a hankering for feeling really inadequate in your baking skills, hit up her blog.

ohmygoshohmygoshohmygosh!

I just had the funnest weekend at a Digital Scrapbooking retreat with my favorite friend Kirsten! Friday night she & I headed up to Park City after dumping our kids off with our husbands at work. At first we kinda thought it would be a bit of a waste of time because the first little class that night was kinda basic, but soon the mind-blowing tips and tricks started and we are the biggest nerds. Just check us out with all our laptops and whatnot...

Classes on Friday were done by 10:30, but Kirsten & I hadn't eaten dinner yet, so we ventured to Albertsons and found lovely junk food and delicious ciabatta roll sandwiches with pesto sauce. Then we hooked up with her sweet cousin, Brooke who was there to teach a class. She is such a doll and had the CUTEST 3 week old baby. I could not wrap my brain around being that well put together after having a baby only 3 weeks before. She is soooo creative, too! Anyway, we all went down to the lobby & found a whole bunch of our fellow scrap-nerds and talked shop and ate delicious cookies from here, one of a very few reasons I've found to stop in Utah Valley. Well, that went on till I decided I was tired at midnight, but when Kirsten & I went to bed, we experienced a strange combination of not being able to shut our pieholes and being too tired to sleep and suddenly not being very tired. At any rate I don't think we were asleep before 3:30 am; which didn't actually really suck until about 3pm, when we both wanted to poke our eyeballs out. But we learned SOOOOO STINKIN' MUCH COOL STUFF!!!! We kept looking over at each other & going, ohmygoshohmygoshohmygosh, and when Kirsten said it she would do one of my favorite things she does, the famous Kirsten "hand flap". Flip your hands back and forth in front of your face like a spazz. That's how it is done, and it makes me smile everytime. I {heart} Kirsten.

cupcakes on the brain...

I'll be doing cupcakes for our 10 year reunion on July 11th as well as a wedding at the end of July, and so I've spent the majority of my time tonight trying to find amazing recipes and fun ideas. Cupcakes are seriously the funnest little bundles of confection, I know it's such the trendy thing right now, but I am SO on that bandwagon! I just wanted to share these funny little pictures, they make me smile. (They are, btw, part of an adorable book Hello, Cupcake by Karen Tack & Alan Richardson.) If you know of any cute cupcake ideas or recipes, I am going to be doing some serious experimentation in the next few months, so feel free to pass them on!

these are for grandma & grandpa

Babysat my sister Carrie's kids for a minute yesterday and they are so freaking cute! She doesn't have the internet and I guess my parents are dying for pictures of the Pinkleman kids. So here are a few.

it's a thin line between love & hate...

Hi, my name is Celeste and I am a Targa-holic. Yes, I know, it's shameful. I suppose it's a step up from being addicted to Wal-Mart, but I literally go there nearly everyday. Does that make me a shallow person? I don't know, I'll let God judge, but my thinking on the subject is currently this:

Due to the extremely convenient proximity of my neighborhood SuperTarget store, I have lost the ability to get everything I need for the next few days in one shopping trip. My brain knows that it would not be a big deal to have to run back to the store, so I never seem to be able to think of everything I need when list-writing time comes.

Take today for example. Panties. Princess panties. Somehow they became a priority high enough on my list to risk a diaper-free trip to the store. (It was a complete potty-training success, by the way!) Either that or the past two days of potty-training have made me a bit cabin-feverish and I HAD TO GET OUT OF THE FREAKING HOUSE!!! So, yeah, princess panties were good enough reason to run to Target.

If I weren't so lazy I would go scan this receipt in and show you evidence of what happens to me when I go to Target.

Today it was this:

What would have, for any sane person, been a ten dollar maximum trip to Target for a pack of princess panties, became a TWO-HUNDRED-AND-FORTY-EIGHT-DOLLARS-AND-SEVENTY-EIGHT-CENTS random crap purchase-a-thon. Am I alone in this problem with Target? Am I honestly the only person who absolutely must have a forty dollar palm sander when I had never thought of owning one before? And you know the worst part? I'm not taking it back. I have decided that, yes, I really do need that palm sander and I have spent the evening making sure that I didn't get totally ripped off without first researching prices for said palm sander. And I actually seem to have gotten a fairly good price. huh, who'd have thought?

So, yeah, let's see, here is a summary of my line of thinking that eventually accumulated to $248.78:

Toddler Panties (at least I didn't forget what I even came in for, like I often do) $8.54

Divided Toddler Dining Tray (useful for newly enforced toddler food apartheid laws) $2.99

Matching Monkey Cup (Sawyer will have to learn to use cups without lids at some point) $1.99

OXO dish brush (this product is God's gift to me; no touching gross dishes) $2.99

Hoover filter replacement (cannot decide if this is worth the price, spring cleaning???) $39.99

Twin box spring cover (for nasty, free ksl.com classified box spring for Sawyer's bed) $12.99

Twin waterproof mattress cover (for no doubt soon to be pee-d on mattress) $19.99

Layette Set (baby shower gift for cute little Becky friend) $19.99

Palm Sander (already addressed this one) $39.99

14Volt Drill (we actually do need this, ours recently passed away.) $54.99

2 muffin tins (cupcake wedding cakes are all the rage; business expense.) $9.38

So yeah, please tell me I'm not the only one who gets lost in a consumer driven frenzy in places like this.

two questions....

#1: Is it really, really, REALLY done?

Crap like this, I mean. I don't want to get my hopes up any more, only to have them dashed to peices by thousands upon thousands of snowflakes. You should see the poor little seedlings on my dining table; growing toward the sunlight.... stretching out to the spring, and sick of their confined little plastic sprouting container. That is much how I feel.

and now question #2: do you LOVE my new bedding or what? That last duvet cover has increasingly started to remind me of a circus tent, and that is not a romantic theme for my marital bed. (not for me at least, there may be some who would argue.) Anyway, it had to go and when I saw the lovebird pillow at Target, I was sold on a trendy yet highly soothing blue/brown color scheme. Matt & I have decided that the soothy-ness cancels out the the trendy-ness.

(oh, also, an added bonus of new bedding & darker draperies- increased napping opportunities when and if I become a tired pregnant person. Jury's still out on that one though.)

weekend update

These are my favorite flowers evah! Stargazer lillies, they smell fantastic, and the mix with the lavender roses was awesome. (it's amazing what a golf-loving husband will do to stay out of the doghouse.) Unfortunatley, I think that Sawyer might be allergic to them though... we'll find out.
Very frightening ex-husband looking man behind my family at the Children's Museum... grrr....he was making me uneasy all day.
Sawyer selecting her baked goods at the child size grocery store. She loved this place! A bit overpriced, it would be worth it during the winter if you had a few kids and bought the annual membership though (& lived closer to SLC).
What a sweetie.
Sawyer & Daddy in the LifeFlight helicopter at Discovery Gateway. (Matt was going to kill this little kid next to him. His patience for other people's kids, especially when they are not being parentally supervised, is muy pequeño. Poor little boy was trying to squeeze in past Matt, there was seriously no room, and I think I overheard him saying "hey, why don't you get out of my face?" In his defense, he had told the kid to wait his turn about eleven times.)

Oh, and also, this morning, Matt & I got callings in the Young Men's & Women's. Yeah, that should be very, very fun, albeit time consuming.

Sawyer {hearts} painting

And you thought the easter egg concentration was fierce. This little girl is sooo artistic, just like Grandma Susie!

have ya had these yet?

and the award for best Easter candy discovery goes to.... my sweet husband Matt, who, knowing my affinity for regular whoppers and my obsession with a good strawberry milkshake, randomly & ever-so-sweetly bought me my new favorite thing evah! (except of course for my easter shoes)

Happy Easter! version 2.0

My parents emailed me this link and I am a very visual person and pictures of the Savior are always very touching to me, so I was a total mess during the entire slideshow. I guess this is a traveling photography show depicting various scenes of Jesus' life, and that one with John the Baptist in the river, just... oh goodness. Go look at it, see the joy on his face. Wow. Art is cool. http://www.reflectionsofchrist.org

growing up tooo fast

I am not what you might call a "baby person." I am excited to be (GET) pregnant, (am not currently pregnant (that I know of)) and very excited to see what kind of an amazing little person God thinks I can handle, but babies are HARD. I do not do well on limited amounts of sleep. I do not remember feeling panicked at the speedy-speed with which Sawyer grows until lately. I LOVE her as a toddler, she is my little buddy and I feel like I can communicate with her and that we "get" each other. Today when she marched herself out to the backyard and climbed up on the neighbor's trampoline, took off her shoes (like she's supposed to) and went to jumpin', all by her onesie, (thank you Jack Sparrow for that little turn of phrase.) I couldn't believe it. Soon she'll be climbing onto the back of motorcycles with good-fer-nothin' biker boys. Better not.

FHE!

Matt bartered some golfing for planning family home evening, and he (as always) came up with such a cute thing to involve Sawyer & really get her attention. I swear, I could never be this creative if my life depended on it. He made this adorable little slidey thing that showed Grandma & Grandpa walking to the temple on their mission in Taiwan. Wonderful! How cute is this video?

Happy Easter!

Sawyer has some pretty fierce concentration skills when it comes to colors & bunnies & stickers.
After hours & hours of primping, the final look is reavealed.
The tiny ponies were a big hit!
We have yet to see if Sawyer has gotten her photogenic skills from Matt's side or Celeste's. So far this is lookin' pretty Davis-y. ;)

Easter Bunny Charlie

Matt & I just tried to take pictures of Charlie with her bunny ears on & I was laughing so hard. She is sooo squirrelly when we try to dress her up at all, she HATES having anything on her head and no amount of treats will convince her to hold still. I love this dog!

I'm outta here!

Girls Weekend!!!

Okay, so this was a very long time ago (or at least it feels like it was) but I just wanted to post these rad pictures of my rad girls. I am so glad that Jill invited us all up to her in-laws vacation home in Logan/Hyrum. It was such a nice place and I didn't thank her enough. It wasn't long enough though, that's for sure! I don't know if anyone else will understand this, and please don't be offended, but I don't know if we would all be friends under normal circumstances, we are all SOOOO different. It's kind of like how you maybe wouldn't be friends with your siblings, but just due the fact that you've been around each other for so long and know way too much about each other, you develop the deepest kind of friendship and love for each other. Yeah, that's how my MDC girls are. I would lay down in traffic for any one of them. I suck soooo bad at staying in touch with them, but they we get together and it's like no time has past and we talk and laugh and cry till 3 am and all is right with the world again. Thanks for letting me in to your little 400 east world girls. (We missed you, Kathryn.)

Princesses on Ice

I know I've posted like 6 times today, but I forgot to post how much fun our weekend was. On Saturday we took Sawyer to Disney Princesses on Ice, she really did love it, unfortunatley she really is a princess-y girl. She dressed up and had so much fun looking at all the other girls' dresses, too. I had so much fun watching her watch the show, she was just delighted by the whole thing!