Car Crash

Today I just experienced the worst car crash of my life. With that said it could have definitely been worse and I feel lucky to have walked out of in unscathed along with Kaitlyn. Today started out to be a fairly good day. My dad came over this morning while I was working to play with Kaitlyn. Then my mom called and asked if I wanted to come meet her at Carolina Place mall. "Sure" I said since I needed to do a little shopping anyway for Christmas. I was in the right turning lane to get off I-485 when it happened. A pick-up truck came right into my lane right next to me forcing me to swerve off the road. Then my car completely lost control and I ended up spinning out of control ACROSS 3 LANES of oncoming interstate traffic, ACTUALLY spinning through the oncoming cars, miraculously not hitting them until the very far left lane a guy ended up hitting my front tire, giving us a little more spin to finally go crashing through the cable wires of the median. The cables sliced through the front of my car, but saved us from spinning all the way into the opposite side of oncoming traffic. I was in hysterics. I immediately flew out of the car and ran to get Kaitlyn who was completely unfazed by the whole thing. It really is a miracle that we didn't' get hurt and I know someone was looking out for us. To top it off though, the pick-up truck drove away, leaving me to be responsible for the whole thing. The cop was nice and didn't give me a ticket since I obviously didn't have time to get the guys licence tag no. but told me insurance would definitely file it as a fault. And they did. The car is pretty totaled since the cables sliced through the whole front hood. We had it towed to KIA and they were very nice and gave us a loaner car for free! I am too scared to drive it though. Here are some pics of the damage once it was pulled from the cables. I should have taken one while it was in the ditch but I was a little preoccupied and freaking out :)

Close up of where the cables sliced through the car.

here you can see how high up the cables went acros the hood through the car...and the radiator leaking into the parking lot

27 Things I am Grateful for...

I thought I would do a Gratitude post in honor of Thanksgiving which is around the corner. I couldn't think of a number for how many I should do, so I picked 27...the number of years I have lived on this Earth :)

1. My Faith in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints: I am so grateful to be fully active in our church. I was inactive for several years during late high school and college but always knew that some day I would return. Now that I have, I never want to leave again. There is not a doubt in my mind that this church is true.


2. My Husband: Whether I'm moody or stressed out he knows how to deal with me. He helps out around the house whether it is laundry or couponing with me.


3. My Daughter: Although she was quite horrid in the early months and is still pretty high maintenance, she has turned into a fun-loving, energetic, silly little girl.


4. My Family: They've made me who I am today and will always be there for me when I need them.


5. Friends: Whether I've had them since high school or only a couple years I am grateful to have them in my life.


6. This Country: I am very grateful to live in a country where we have the freedoms that we have...even if some people may be trying to diminish some of those freedoms...


7. The Internet: That may sound shallow, but I cannot imagine life without it now. I use it for everything!


8. Good Food: I LOVE to eat and will try most anything unless it has chocolate in it :)


9. We FINALLY finished reading the Old Testament: We are trying to make it through the entire quad (Old Testament, New Testament, BofM, D&C, Pearl of Great Price) from front to back. We started about 2 1/2 years ago and FINALLY finished the OT. Although we do use the Institute study manual as we go along, so that takes extra time.


10. Yard Sales: Yes I love them and about 90% of Kaitlyn's belongings come from them.


11. Good In-laws: From my sibling-in-laws to my in-laws they are all nothing but nice to me.


12. Our Home: Althought I do wish we didn't rush into buying it, I am happy we are stuck with a house that at least is large enough to grow into.


13. DVR: We hate watching live TV now. We love our favorite shows, but love to be able to watch them on our own time and fast forward through all the commercials.


14. The Temple: We have had the opportunity to start going a lot more often and are very grateful for that.


15. Dave Ramsey: We started his program in February of this year and I am now happy to say that we are completely out of debt as of today (besides our mortgage of course.)


16. Our Jobs: Even though I don't plan on keeping mine for too much longer, I am grateful for how things have worked out to allow me to still be at home with Kaitlyn.


17. Electricity


18. Sleep: Something I don't get enough of anymore.


19. Warm Weather


20. Cars


21. Cell Phones


22. Baby Monitors


23. Vacations: Mostly cruises. We LOVE them. We actually wish we were on that cruise that got stranded so that we would have received a full refund, plus a free cruise voucher!


24. Good Books


25. Coupons: We definitely couldn't live on our grocery budget of $140 without them!


26. Cats


27. 8:00: That is Kaitlyn's bedtime. Yes, yes we love spending time with her, but we don't get upset when 8:00 rolls around :)

Bahamas Cruise 2010

So we are back from our cruise! It was a lot of fun. I was mainly nervous about leaving Kaitlyn but she did great! My mom said she barely fussed at all and stayed on her schedule with no problems! So that was a huge relief. If only she would behave for other sitters as well! We left out of Charleston which was nice rather than driving all the way to Miami or Ft. Lauderdale. Justin's brother Jason and his wife Angie went along with us so it was nice to have another couple to hang out with at the dinners and stuff. Here are a few pics of our trip!

Our boat

Our first porthole room. We have always had interiors, but we got a porthole for the same price...not the same as a window, but still nice! And it had a lot of extra space you could put stuff by the window.

One of the formal nights

Nassau, Bahamas

We decided to go to Atlantis while we were in Nassau. It was amazing! So beautiful. I am happy to say that I have been there...even if I didn't get to stay there! We decided to do their water park/aquarium/ beaches excurision. It was fun, but DEFINITELY not worth the money. Everything at Atlantis was SO expensive.

One of the waterslides that goes through a shark tank

Freeport, Bahamas

Since there is not much to do in Freeport we decided to go snorkeling. We found a really affordable place online before we left that picks you up and takes you to their private beach with a little restaurant and everything. They rent out their snorkeling gear or you can go kayaking, etc. We planned on going snorkeling and I started...but there were jellyfish EVERYWHERE. They weren't the really dangerous stinging kind but I didn't care. I wanted out of that water! So I swam all the way back to shore and they let me go out in a one man kayak instead. Justin and Jason and Angie went out anyways and several people including Justin got stung. He claims it only hurt for about 5 minutes though. Whatev. Not me!

KEY WEST:

We didn't do any shore excursions this day so we just walked around. We walked down to the Southernmost Point of the USA...only 90 miles from Cuba!

We decided to go to the Ernest Hemmingway house. It was interesting. I loved it b/c of all of the cats! Apparently Ernest LOVED cats and had tons of them...there was even a cat cemetary on the property. He was known for having 6-toed cats and their decendants still live there!
Me with one of the cats

Halloween Weekend 2010

We had a very busy Halloween weekend, but it was a lot of fun too! Friday night we had our Church Halloween Festival. I made Justin dress up and he hated it :) But I thought it was fun! We dressed up as Hansel and Gretal, but just looked like cheesy German people. Kaitlyn dressed up in a clown outfit I had gotten last year at Walmart for 90% off but it fit perfectly and was SO cute. The church had a "trunk or treat" where the kids went around the parking lot collecting candy. There was also a potluck dinner which is my favorite. I don't know why but I just LOVE potlucks. I love to sample a little bit of this and that from all kinds of people. Justin HATES them though and usually just starves. Here are some pics from the party:

Saturday Morning we headed out to use our Carowinds season passes one last time. We met up with our friends Mark and Ashley and just hung out in the kiddie section this time. Kaitlyn rode her first 'scary' ride...The hot air balloons! Those things were really intense! I was suprised that was a ride she was allowed to go on!

Carowinds had a kiddie Halloween section that was cute and they had lots of games and activities but she was still too young for most of them.

We decided to bring the wagon so that Kaitlyn and Briggs could ride together. I think they had fun. Kaitlyn LOVES wagon rides. She can be having a screaming fit and you put her in the wagon and everything is cured.

Saturday night Justin and I attended the wedding Kaiser and Miquel...one of my good friends from HS. It was at the Ritz Carlton uptown and really nice. My mom came over and watched Kaitlyn and we enjoyed a night out. Miquel looked beautiful as usual!

Sunday (Halloween): We went to church that morning and then came home and relaxed. We weren't planning on going trick or treating since she is so young still and it just looks like we want the candy, but we ended up running out of candy for the neighborhood trick or treaters! They came in swarms...literally like 10+ at a time. Eventually I just stood outside not even bothering to go back inside since I would keep getting up every minute. So after we ran out we decided we would go "collect" more candy! haha. So we dressed Kaitlyn up and went out. She loved getting candy. We let her have one candy bar and she tore threw it with her teeth and just smashed her face into it to get all of the candy out! Gross...since I hate chocolate. I guess she doesn't take after me.

One year ago...

So this past weekend we celebrated Kaitlyn's first birthday! It was a lot of fun and we had a great turnout. Pretty much all of both sides of our family was in attendance and it was great getting catch up with everyone. Kaitlyn was a little on the grumpy side though, b/c she had been VERY sick the whole week prior. It started out just diarrhea, but then escalated into diarrhea literally like every 15 minutes! It was horrible, she wouldn't eat anything and threw up her bottles when she did eat. She also developed a REALLY bad diaper rash from all of the diarrhea and it got really swollen and painful. I tried to just keep her outside on the back patio naked so she could air out a bit. She even lost a whole pound that week...which for her was a lot!But luckily she was recovered by the party...just still a little on the grumpy side :) Here are some of the pictures from her party:

We also had join birthday party with her friend Brigham who is one week older with some of our other friends from our old singles ward.

Some other happenings in our life right now is that we are in the process of switching over to cow's milk. That process is going ok I guess...we give her two bottles a day with half breastmilk and half cow's milk and I am slowly decreasing the breastmilk ounce by ounce. We are hoping to transition to only the cow's milk soon b/c I have already quit pumping but still have a small frozen supply we are using. I made it to my one year goal and that is long enough :) I am a little annoyed though b/c she will drink water out of her sippy cups like a champ, but the second we put milk in there she throws a fit! And here is the other stubborn thing she does...the milk is not even about the taste for her...She LOVES for us to spoon feed her milk...even right from her sippy cup...but the second we put the lid on to give it to her she wants nothing to do with it. So I guess it is either continue with the bottles for a while or spoon feed her milk everyday to get her milk intake! I guess I at least need to be grateful that she is drinking it!

Other than that things are going pretty well with us. We just got approved to refinance our house which we are excited about. We were so nervous before the appraiser came, b/c if our house did not appraise high enough we were out $400 for nothing. But luckily it appraised for $3000 more than what we needed so we cut it close! But we were thrilled for this market. This refinance will put us one step closer to me finally being able to quit work. We are hopefully going to be saving around $200 a month with our refinance which will help out a lot once we lose my salary!

My attempt at Photoshop

Have I mentioned that Kaitlyn is about to turn ONE! Ah! I can't believe it! Well everyone knows that we are on a SUPER strict budget, but we still wanted to make up first birthday invitations to have as a keepsake for a little family party that we are having for her birthday. So we researched photo invitation prices and they were WAY to expensive! So I thought I would attempt to create my own. I have a downloaded version of photoshop so I dressed Kaitlyn up and took some home photos of her, then I messed around for a few hours on an invitation. I have never really used photoshop before and it was a lot more confusing than I was expecting. So I googled what I wanted to do and then took youtube tutorials! haha! I just tried to keep it simple with a pink and white polka dot background and I thought it turned out pretty well! Then all I had to do was send them off to Wal-mart to have printed for only like $.18 a piece! MUCH cheaper than the alternative!

I will post pictures soon of her actual birthday party! We are having the family party here at our house on the 25th and on Monday we are having a joint bday party with her best friend Brigham who is exactly one week older than her!

Sewing Projects

So I am finally getting around to publishing my sewing projects post. These have all been completed for quite a while, but I have just been slack about updating my blog. So here they all are. Most are clothes for me. A lot of them are from fabric that I have had lying around for a long time, but just never actually sat down to try and make anything. This first one here is a teething rail cover for Kaitlyn's crib. When she first learned to pull herself up she was destroying it. So I had originally looked around for something b/c I knew I didn't want the plastic covers. I found these cloth covers that I like the look of better at Target you can see Here and Here. But I really didn't want to pay $21.99 each plus tax and shipping for both the front and the sides since it is an online only product. So I thought this has to be easy enough to make. And I could pick out whatever fabric I want! So I went on a trip to Mary Jo's and got all my supplies for only around $10! And I thought the colors ended up matching Kaitlyn's current room attire pretty well!

So Here is the final product up on her crib. I made little fabric ties that just tie to each other and so far she hasn't messed with them and is content biting on the fabric instead of her crib! Plus this can just be washed whenever it gets dirty!

Close up of front and side covers: Letters I painted for Kaitlyn's room. I can't remember if I ever posted these on my blog or not. It's hard to see all the detail in this picture, but I think they turned out pretty cute. I finished them while I was still pregnant, otherwise I knew I would never get it done!

Two skirts: Green with white flower embroidery and a blue seersucker

Dress with sleeves that tie at the end

Green Damask dress

Pink semi-formal dress. I made this to wear on the cruise that Justin and I are going on.

So that's all. The skirts and dresses were all made by patterns, but the crib rail cover I made on my own. I wish I had more time to make more stuff, but that is enough for now. I still have a pile of fabric in my guest room waiting on me though!

Where oh where has my Summer went!?!?

I realized that it has been way too long since I last posted. I still plan on doing my sewing project post as well, but I have just been so busy! But I figured I at least need to update at least for me to look back on. Life has been crazy busy lately. We literally had an obligation almost every single weekend in July and it has just now started to calm down. I feel like summer has slipped through my fingertips. Justin and I had bought season passes to Carowinds in high hopes of spending our free time there, but we just made it to the water park for the first time last night! And we only did that b/c this is the last week it is open during weekdays. It was a fun night away though while my mom babysat. I did actually head down to the beach with my family for a few days. Justin stayed home, so I rode down with my mom and Kaitlyn.

Here is a picture of the three of us:

My mom with Kaitlyn at the ocean. She HATED the ocean. She would scream and lift her legs up so that the water never touched her! haha!

One of our good friends from our days at the Singles Ward got married the last weekend in July. It was nice to get to go to the temple twice in one month since Justin's sister had gotten married at the beginning of the month! Here is a picture of our group from the Singles. We have all remained really good friends and try to get together often.
I have also been getting the pleasure of spending a lot more time with my High School friends as well! All but one has moved back to Charlotte and so a few of us that are either between jobs or on maternity leave have been getting together for lunches. This is me and my friend Emily and her baby Caleb.So now for my neglected update on Life. Kaitlyn is about to be 11 months old! Eeek! Where did the time go! Just Kidding...the first 6 months were ROUGH and I am happy to have them behind me! But I would be crazy to complain about her now. She has literally transformed into a completely different baby. Ever since she became mobile she has done a complete 180 and transformed into this happy, sweet baby! We like to think that she was just bored out of her mind being stuck in a body that couldn't do what she wanted it to do. Now that she is mobile she is wonderful! I must finally be experiencing the bliss that new moms have! haha. I know this will sound bad, but other first time parents would always be talking about how awesome it was and how much they were in love with their little one...and then Justin and I would be like "we got the short end of the stick I guess...haha...I mean of course we LOVED her, but I just never had those sweet bliss moments. Now when I see her smile and laugh and play her little games it is just pure happiness. So here is to hoping she continues to get better and better!

Kaitlyn vs The Stairs

Kaitlyn is all over the place now! Whenever we are downstairs she is constantly crawling over to the stairs and up she goes! Tonight was her first night crawling the entire way up the stairs! Don't worry, I was behind her waiting to catch her if she fell while Justin videotaped! Don't feel like you have to watch the whole thing...I understand it is probably not as exciting for you! haha.

Fourth of July Festivities!

This year was calmer than most 4th's now that we have a baby. We went to church and then later that evening went over to our friend's Mark and Ashley's house for a cook-out. Ashley made this awesome Flag cake! I had to take a picture of it!

Kaitlyn in her 4th of July attire

Mr. and Mrs. Jorgensen

This past week was SUPER busy for us. We left Tuesday afternoon for Washington D.C. It was also our first time leaving Kaitlyn overnight! My mom came and picked her up before we left. It was so sad! We made good time up to D.C. and then spent Wednesday at the temple for Ainsley's endowments and then they got married on Thursday. After the wedding, Jake's parents provided a luncheon at the Cheesecake Factory. Then came the horrible part. It took us (NO EXAGGERATION) 3 HOURS to go no more than 30 miles!!!! We were sooo mad. I HATE D.C. traffic. To the point that I really have no desire to go back there for a long long time. We still were going to have to drive to Charlotte to pick up Kaitlyn and then drive on to Shallotte that same night. My mom was nice enough to meet us in Raleigh so that we shaved off a good 4-5 hours off the trip since we were able to go straight on to Shallotte from Raleigh instead of going way around.
Kaitlyn actually did suprisingly well while we were away until the very last day, My mom was ready to give her back! haha. She was pretty good for us while in Shallotte Friday for the reception. Here are some pictures of the past week:

The Happy Couple (Ainsley is Justin's little sister, youngest of 4 older brothers)
Me and My Sister and Laws!

Justin and I in front of the D.C. Temple. We were married there 3 years and 2 months ago!
First Dance at Beach Reception at Ocean Isle Beach
Family Beach Photo

Life at the Moment

Kaitlyn has been growing up so fast lately! Which is making her happier and happier each day...and that makes me happy! Seriously though, in just a matter of weeks she has started walking all over our family room (while holding onto her toys or furniture) and just today she crawled for the first time! She still prefers to get to what she wants through walking, but I think is figuring out the crawling. We also bought her a walker off of Craigslist and she literally runs all over the house in it! She is such a happier, more independent baby now. Although, nap time is much harder now as you can see!

She pulls herself up and walks around her crib, so it makes trying to get her to sleep very hard! She usually will only take one nap a day now. And then one in the car if we are out and about. As you can see from the picture, we had to go ahead and lower her crib mattress. She is also destroying the crib with her teeth! I am in the process of creating a crib rail cover to prevent that from happening. I have been really into sewing lately. I am working on three different dresses for myself as well. I will do a post on all of my sewing creations when I am finished.

Other than that we have a very busy Summer ahead of us. Weddings, Showers, Parties Galore!

Disney World May 2010

We have arrived safely home from our first Disney trip with a baby. Kaitlyn actually did suprisingly well. She took naps in the stroller and her eating habits grew tremendously! She LOVED eating all of the table foods that we were eating. I guess she just doesn't like baby food! She has gotten pretty good at eating breads and soft foods. The only time she really had her melt-downs was when she was really tired or Justin and I were on a ride and she was left with my mom and brother! haha. It was a lot of fun, but much more stressful with a baby. Having to tote around all of her bottles and my pumping supplies was not fun. Maybe we will try again when she is a little older! But until then I would rather stick to relaxing vacations like cruises!

Here are some pics from our trip: Enjoy!

Kaitlyn trying on my sunglasses

Standing in line
Kaitlyn attempting to pull the Sword from the Stone
Meeting Cinderella
Us plus my brother Justin in front of the castle

In front of the Seas at Epcot. We love the 'Mine Mine Mine' seagulls

Tommorrowland Transit Authority: One of my favorite rides! haha

Tree of Life

Kaitlyn's first time in a pool. Not as much of a fan being held, but we got her a floatie and she kicked all around the pool. She loved it!