May 2021 Highlights

 May is my favorite month of the year! It's got our anniversary, Mother's Day, my birthday, and more! Here's what we were up to May 2021:

We've gone on lots of walks together to unwind and catch up on our days.

We turned on the AC for the first time this year and the thermostat has been through the ringer ever since - switching back and forth between hot and cold. It's been a crazy weather month!

We needed to take Jane into Chris' office to get a couple of her teeth pulled in preparation for braces.

She was super anxious and scared but of course Chris is the best and made it no big deal. Then we went to Texas Roadhouse for dinner and all was right with the world.

Cuties!

Janey's new braces! She got an expander too that they clicked wider every night for a couple weeks. She'll have braces for a year or so.

Lemon - 1, Paige - 0.

Sleepy Rachel.

She's sloooooooowly getting adjusted to her meds and returning to her happy-go-lucky self.

Old farts.

I took Joey on a walk around the block when Chris was almost home from work and we hitched a ride back in his car.

The baby buns have been borned!

Another time I was walking Joey around the block a skinny little dog was walking down the street and came right to me. No leash, no owner anywhere! Poor old thing! Fox went with me to the ER vet to see if he was microchipped. No dice. I did some looking around on Next Door and found a similar dog from a few weeks ago and reached out to the owners. It was them! We reunited Oliver with his family just down the street. He's 14 and has severe kidney failure and needs an IV every night. I'm so happy we were able to find his family.

On Friday May 7th, I spent the morning packing, cleaning cages, tidying up the house, doing my hair, and getting everything prepped and ready to go on our road trip to Utah. At 1pm I picked Fox & Jane up early from school and Chris got home from work early. By 1:30pm, we were off! It was a beautiful day and the scenery was breathtaking.

We stopped halfway (about 3.5 hours) in Grand Junction for dinner at Wendy’s and then while Chris drove across the street to get gas, the kids and I walked across to stretch our legs. It’s tradition. Got some pics of our cuties in front of an old car and Fox fighting with a bear.

We watched The Greatest Showman, Back to the Future, and started Dan in Real Life. By then it was the part of the drive that’s super flat and it was very windy and a piece of the car broke off! It was loud and stressful so we turned off the movie and instead I went through Our Travels and in order we reminisced about our 4 years in Germany. I got the news from the pet sitter that Rachel wouldn’t take her pills so I was upset. Luckily she put the pills in Rachel's food and she ate them that way for the rest of our trip so I was relieved! Once we got off the freeway we drove right by the prison for kids. I told Fox & Jane if they were bad we were going to send them to the place where bad kids go and Jane replied in a terrified voice, “JUVI?!” How did she know that the penitentiary for kids is called juvi? 

We pulled into the BYU Creamery at 9pm to meet my parents for ice cream, but it closed at 9pm instead of the advertised time of 11pm, whomp whomp. Instead we bought some cartons of ice cream and met my parents at the Taylor’s to chat for a bit.

Then we went to our airbnb down the street which is a whole other story... I walked into somebody living in the basement! They definitely didn’t disclose that information when we booked this super expensive place to stay... Luckily we didn’t spend hardly any time there.

Saturday May 8th was our 14th wedding anniversary!

In the morning we woke up early to get a head start on our busy day! My dad suggested we hike up to Troll Cave.

I was expecting a 20 minute or so walk. It was 2 hours, 4 miles, 75 floors, and I got way over 10,000 steps by 10:30 in the morning! Ha! I should have known lol. This is Tom Taylor afterall!

Fox almost fell into the bottomless pit inside the cave which was super scary. Chris and Jane gave up less than halfway up so he took her to McDonald’s while the rest of us completed the hike. Once my parents got ready for the day we drove down to BYU to go to the bookstore to do some shopping.

Then we walked over to JDawgs for lunch.

They added fries to their menu, mmm!

My parents went back to the Taylor’s to give Uncle John his lunch. We drove by the Tree Streets - this is a view that I used to see all day every day.  

We passed the Warner’s old house. So many memories here.

Then we went to the Bean Museum for the first time as a family and I can’t even remember the last time I went - never when I lived in Utah crazily enough! Jane loved the room filled with birds.

The butterfly made of butterflies was fascinating. 

Mural in progress.

After visiting the museum we walked over to the bridge in front of the Bell Tower where Chris proposed to me, a fitting way to celebrate our anniversary!

We were planning to walk around campus more but at this point we were pooped and it was still pretty early in the day with a lot more activities to do so we stopped to smell the flowers in front of the ASB before heading out.

Chris dropped me off at the Taylor’s while they went to the airbnb to chill. My mom, dad and I drove up to the Taylor’s cabin in Sundance.

It’s still cute and quaint. It’s so fun to see all the old pics and think about how much history fills the walls.

Back at the Taylor’s, I visited with Grandma Cathie for a half hour, one-on-one, and I got to tell her how much I love her and how much she means to me. It was really really really really hard. But I’m so glad I was able to talk with her one last time before she passed away.

Later while I was sitting chatting with my mom I noticed @johnsonfiles had posted in their stories - they were going to be live at Comedy Sportz that very night and to swipe up for tickets! I could hardly believe it! I was soooooooo excited and booked seats right away - Malm said yes to babysitting! Best anniversary date ever! So serendipitous!

Lots and lots of family was there for awhile: John Jr. and Daniel with his girlfriend Abbie; my dad and mom; my family (me, Chris, Fox & Jane); and David and two of his kids Ben and Naomi.

We all (except John & Cathie) went to Bam Bams BBQ for dinner.

Chris ordered me the wrong sandwich lol but luckily my dad traded his with me - so nice of him! 

After dinner we went down to the BYU Creamery and we all ate our ice creams outside. We spent another hour or two back at the Taylor’s and Jane & Naomi colored and played the Burn the House Down dice game.

Around 8:30pm (usually I fall asleep around then, no joke hahaha) we dropped my mom, Fox & Jane off at the airbnb then Chris and I went to Comedy Sportz on Center Street.

Shaun and Nicole are real people! We saw them with our own eyes!

Oh my goodness the show was sooooooooo funny, I laughed sooooooooooo hard! I didn’t even mind being out so late, it was worth every second of being tired for days afterwards hahaha. Such a great night. After the show all the comedians were outside and since we were sitting in the back I was able to go up to Shaun really fast and fan over him, not my finest moment hahaha. But I’m glad I did that. I drove Malm back to the Taylor’s and we quickly went to sleep. I haven’t stayed up that late in I can’t even remember! The next morning, Sunday May 9th, was Mother’s Day! We packed up everything and then drove to the Taylor’s to say goodbye to my Malm and Dald. We’ll see them again soon in a couple months in Wallace, ID for the 4th of July along with the rest of the family, I can’t wait! 

We made it home in record time - less than 7.5 hours even with stopping for lunch and gas. Chris has a lead foot lol. But it didn’t even seem like he was driving all that fast! It was much less windy the drive back, or maybe on the way there it was a headwind and on the way home it was a tailwind? The cherry on top is it rained super hard the last half hour so we got a free car wash! PS - we saw 44 of the 50 US license plates on our short drive! What are the odds?

Grandma Cathie Taylor passed away just two weeks later on May 24th at the age of 90 from pancreatic cancer. Her obituary is so lovely. What an accomplished and fine and beautiful woman! I hope to be just like her!

Spring is sometimes in the air.

Sometimes it feels like an eternal winter.

One day I couldn't meet the kids after school to walk them home - I was at the vet with Joey (he's all good!). It had been raining and usually when it's wet I ask the kids to take off their shoes in the garage so as to not track muddy shoe prints all around the house. Without me even having to ask, they knew, and took of their shoes all on their own. Proud mama moment :)

The kids had a piano recital.

They did so great! They've been taking lessons for over two years now. Again, so proud of them.

Snuggle time!

Last day of school 2021! What a year! So crazy. Fox's class was quarantined the final week of school but they did get to go back in person the very last day.

The outdoor pools opened on my birthday so we went and had fun!

Chris went with the youth group to clean up roads and they got featured on our city's Facebook page.

Kneaders is sooo yummy. My new favorite is the bread bowl with Thai chicken soup.

I took Jane to a birthday party down in Castle Rock which is where the closest Crave Burger is now so I took myself for lunch. I read a book (Hail Mary - so good!) while I was there and stuffed my face with yummy sweet potato fries, a chicken burger, and a shake.

Cincinnati Chili and Chicken Tacos.

It was Margi's 70th birthday so we went to her house for a special dinner.

Leti was finally able to join Nick in Canada! They got married in freaking February and only now, over 3 months later, were "allowed" to be together. So ridiculous. But so happy for them!

Home projects continue! I got a whole bunch of sample paint colors and noodled over my decision for weeks. I submitted the bottom color to our HOA and they denied it, saying it was too dark. They came back with an alternate suggestion but I thought it was too light. So we went with a happy medium called "Midnight in NY" by Behr.

I love this color! I'm actually kinda glad the HOA made us pick a new color, I couldn't love this one more.

The whole painting experience on the other hand has been a total disaster. What should have taken a few days has now turned into a few weeks. I guess it's hard to please two artists? We're picky and perfectionists. But breaking our AC and furnace and lights and windows (such a long story...)... come on now. Anyway! It'll be good in the end!

Bring on the flowers!

New mirror.

The chandelier that arrived from Italy in a million pieces last month with no instructions got assembled and installed by a great electrician.

Love the character (and actual light!) it adds in my happy scrappy place!

We got a round table for the dining room which we've been using to play games at.

Now what can I do? I want to add molding to the stairs and entryway! We'll see if that ever happens!

My summertime happy place!

Me throughout the month.

These flowers are so delayed in growing this year, but they're finally sprouting!

Somehow a sprinkling of pansies started growing in the grass! I uprooted them and put them in a new pot to hopefully continue blooming.

We went to our first Rockies game! It got progressively colder as the afternoon went on and and 3 of the 4 of us ended up getting Rockies sweatshirts to stay warm.

We won 7-6, woohoo!

Tasty treats!

Tornado warnings all day, yikes! We never saw nuttin'.

For my birthday we went out to dinner to Perry's with my in-laws and Hailey. Yummy food!

We watched A Quiet Place in preparation for the 2nd installment which after being delayed for over a year finally came to theaters!

We watched the Friends reunion. So so so good to seem them all together again.

We saw this movie. Kinda lame lol.

We saw Finding You which was super cute! Totally want to watch it again.

And then of course A Quiet Place Part II which was great.

Disneyland opened after being closed more than a year! The magic is back! We're planning a trip for October during all the Halloween festivities.

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ON THE SCRAPPY FRONT!

I shared 4 projects here on the blog this month (well, a couple more, but I included them in April's roundup): Wonders MemoryDex Cards // Wonderful Layout // Family Walk Layout // Oh Happy Day Layout

On May 28th I turned 36th! I have officially been scrapbooking for 20 years! WOW!!

I had some friends over the next day for a birthday crop, it was so fun.

Jessica from Color Cast Designs created this for me to put in my Happy Scrappy Place! I love it!

I designed and gave away 3 more cut files in my Happy Scrappy Place Facebook Group:

May 1st was International Scrapbook Day. Every 15 minutes from 6am-2:30pm I had an alarm go off to post the next challenge or cut file. It was a fun and busy day!

The last event of the day was going live to teach how to make a paper frames layout (Family Walk). I grabbed a screenshot from the saved live hehe:

I also taught a virtual class with Scrappin' in the City and took some screenshots for my planner:

We made two layouts in two hours and it was tons of fun as always!

I stitched more things because I can't get enough of it.

Ta da!

Next stitching project in the works:

There is a Wonders kit on HSN for a good deal:

I got two packages of happy mail on the same day and what-do-ya-know they both had the exact same stitched cards in them! Ha! So funny! This first one is from my talented friend and design team member Zsoka Marko - she has her own incredible stamps and dies sets with her company A Pocket Full of Happiness.

The other card is from Spellbinders. Can't wait to make one too!

One more package of happy mail, this time from EttaVee herself!! She's so amazing. Be sure to check out her new book, The Bright Book!

The biggest project keeping me busy this past month has been my 4x4 Mini Album Virtual Class!

The boxes of product arrived a week or two apart and then I spent days inventorying and making the kits.

Thanks to my cute helper Fox, we got all 200 kits created and shipped out!

Asking for a bucket at the post office makes hauling all the packages in soooo much easier!

And then I did a live unboxing to show what comes in the kit:

All of my 4x4 Mini Albums can now be purchased at scrapbook.com! And you can sign up for my 4x4 Mini Album Virtual Class HERE. 

Wonders Coptic Bookbinding Kits are now back in stock!

My pile of layouts is getting big! Almost time to film through them and sort them away into albums.

Don't forget that I also have 12 stencils! I LOVE seeing how you use these on your projects!

I'll end with a photo of my happy place.

May 2021 flew by. So many good moments. Many sad moments. Grateful for eternal families. Still loving scrapbooking and life in Colorado.