Summer fun 2012

This has been a fun summer so far.  First I went to Fernley, Nevada for a family reunion.  I drove with my mom and Jacob flew to meet up with us.  

 We picked cherries to make delicious cherry dump cake.  It is so tasty and easy.  I ended up making it 4 times.  Each time it was a major hit!
Cherry dump cake: 
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
2. Put 4 cups of halved cherries in a Pyrex dish
3. Evenly dump a cake mix on top (we used a white cake mix)
4. Melt  1 stick of butter and drizzle it on top of the cake.
5. Bake for 30-35 minutes
6. Eat with vanilla ice cream.

We also used the cherries for a cherry pit spitting contest.  

Ashley Christensen and I.  She had her baby boy, Jaxon, 1 week later.  I have 10 weeks to go to meet our baby boy.

I have some awesome aunts.  They like to have so much fun that it was a struggle to take a picture with them not being too silly or laughing too hard.

My grandpa Kay with his 5 granddaughters.

After visiting Nevada, my next stop was Oregon.  Where Garrett met back up with me.  My parents worked hard to put this fire pit together in the backyard. It looks so nice and is very relaxing back there.  So far we have roasted marshmallows and starbursts, hot dogs, and quesadillas.

  My Awesome cousin, Jennifer, threw a baby shower for me.  My aunt Alicia, cousin Allison, and my mom helped out with it too.  They did an amazing job.  The decorations were cute, food was tasty, and the company was marvelous.

 We played a really fun baby concentration game.

Everyone was so generous.  We got some very nice and adorable gifts.  I can't wait to put them all to good use.

Happy Father's Day!

 Happy Father's Day to my Amazing Father and Husband!

We have a camera that takes less than quality pictures and because of this we hardly ever take pictures.  When we do, they never turn out good.  With a baby on the way, Garrett and I decided that we NEEDED to get a quality camera to take pictures and film our cute little addition.  My brother who is amazing behind the camera, DevinSuperTramp (you've got to check him out!!),recommended getting a Canon EOS Rebel T3i camera .  It takes still images and video.  It is fairly pricey, but I figured you can't put a price to precious memories.  For father's day I gave Garrett the camera.  Here are some shots of Garrett's first encounter with the camera.

 
I can't wait for us to learn how to use the camera better and capture some great footage.

Quiet books (Completed!!!!!!!!!!)

I started making quiet books with my aunt about two years ago.  We had no clue what we were getting ourselves into.  Needless to say, it took me a while to get them finished.  This weekend my mom come to visit and we tackled this project.  I thought it would be best to have the quiet books completed before my children are full grown :) I had the pages completed, but we had to come up with a way to bind it all together.  We punched 3 eyelets into each page and put the pages in a plastic flexible binder.  My mom is amazingly talented and came up with a way to make the cloth book covers. I can't wait for our little guy to be able to use his quiet book! 

Crocheting

At a church activity were all the ladies gather together to do something fun, mingle, and/or learn a new skill I learned how to CROCHET!  This was pretty exciting for me because I have been curious of how to crochet and always admire others people's work.  It took me a while to get the hang of it... but once I got it down, I couldn't stop!

Here was my first project- A burp cloth.  

Pillow cover

I bought two amazing pillow forms at a garage sale last summer for a quarter each.  They have been sitting on my top shelf for a year now, waiting and waiting for me to do something with them.  I finally found some fabric to cover these pillows.  They were simple to make.  All you do is cut two squares/rectangles out and sew.

Baby Boy Mattson

We are excited to announce that we are expecting our first little one September 22nd!  Garrett and I are very excited.  We are ready to start our next Big Adventure.  

Almost as excited, are my 2nd grade kiddos.  They are constantly bringing up my baby.  Today one of my students walked into the classroom and said, "Mrs. Mattson, you're big!"  Later on in the day, another student said, "Whoa!  Look at Mrs. Mattson's stomach.  It's getting big."  I love that they speak their mind and they love having a "baby" in our classroom. 

I had my students vote on whether they thought I was having a boy or girl.  19 voted for a baby girl and 6 for a baby boy.  To reveal the baby's gender to my students I put kool-aid and sugar in a pitcher.  They then watched as I poured water into the pitcher to see if it would turn pink or blue.  Their reactions were cute.  

 

When they found out I didn't have a name for our little guy yet, they graciously helped me out by writing lists of names. Here are just a few of those names:

PJ, James, Blake, Jake, Erik, Christian, Richard, Ben, Benito, Travis, Patrick, Ollie, Jon, Nathan, David, Josh, Drake, Graham, Anthony, Connor, Sean, Carson, Jordan, Parker, Aniconda, Lebran, Hunter, Junior, Simon, Michael, Jeremy, Rymys, Zakery, Potter, Bigum, Geronimo, Stek, Tom, Spike, Sam, Wesley, Devin, Nick, Pizza, Timothy, Peder, Spot, Giraffe, Shiloh, Mike, Justin, Chris, Brian, Lukis, Luewis, George, Stanley, Max, Damen, Jr., Diego, Buddy, Edster, Franke, Scot, Timmy, Flecherd, Jakeson, Mason, Stefon, Jadin, Martin, Jasin, Harry Potter, Tony, Jesse, Eric, Eddie, Kalub, Cody, Alexzander, Coda, Benjemin, Adam, Alfonzo, Xander, Astin, Andy, Brain, Stan, Kent, Dilan, Caden, Skyler, Jeremy, Lionel, Arture, Stilton, Willy, Rocky, Fin, Julien, Simon, Thedor, Alvin, Davin, Drake, Rodrick, Aladin, Javar, Braxton, Tintin, Cemone, Ethan, Colon, Nephi, Jim, Joe, and Jeff.  

What do you think?  

Cake Balls: Boy or Girl?  Take a bite.

 

I have lots of projects I can now start!  Let the fun begin.