How do I love thee? Let me count the ways

J, I love you because...

...you dance with me. Slow dances. Fast silly dances with a lot of hip shaking. I love that you aren't afraid to be silly with me.

...you take care of me. You ask if I need anything. You make sure I have water when I'm camped out watching TV. You make delicious dinners. You make me cookie dough even though you grumble about it.

...you can tell when something is important to me. Even if it's something you were against at first, you would support it if I had my heart set.

...you don't get mad when I'm grumpy. You laugh at me, which helps shake me from my mood. You shake your head and you make that face that tells me I am amusing you.

...you love the little fur children and worry about them like I do.

...you are such a hard worker. I am proud of how you taught yourself to code and how to build websites. How you continue to learn and don't give up.

...you ask me out on dates.

...you tell me you appreciate me.

...you don't judge me. I can tell you anything. I can tell you the deepest darkest secret and you always make me feel like you understand.

...you can read my mind. Or rather, my face. I love when you ask me a question and only have to look at my face and already have the answer.

...you laugh at my stupid Nacho Libre joke. Every time.

...when you hurt my feelings you apologize sincerely. You don't try to argue with me, you don't tell me I'm wrong, and you don't invalidate my feelings.

...you are easy to live with. You are very considerate and respect me. When I want something cleaned, you help. When I want to do a house project, you help.

...when I take you to parties where you don't know anyone you go and make friends.

...when we pick up Talon you talk to him about games and Pokemon.

...you are respectful and check with me before doing things like rearranging the office even though the office is your domain.

...when I jokingly asked for a bedtime story you made up the best story about frogs on the spot. And have continued to make up awesome frog stories.

...that one time when I just smiled at you, and you said, "You did something nice and I need to appreciate you." And you were exactly right and could tell that from my FACE.

...you make my heart happy.

I can't believe I have loved you for over a decade. Happy ten year anniversary my Heart.

Gallery Wall and Other Art

I have been wanting to do a "galley wall" and just do more to decorate my walls for awhile now. My sister Kristi, who should be an interior designer, graciously offered to help.

Here is one wall's "before."

I had purchased two signs at a discount, knowing I wanted to do something different with them and just use the boards instead of starting from scratch.

The first one:

We turned this sign into a hook for the dog leashes. Kristi came up with the fabulous idea of putting each dog's paw print for the respective leash.

Joseph helped, against his will.

We found, through trial and error, and it is better to brush the paint onto the dog's foot. You can see for the two paw prints for Tiny which one we pushed her paw into the paint and which one was painted on (we painted on Osa's but it's smudged because that dog has hair everywhere). After that piece of the project was complete, I needed to secure the hooks.

I used screws with bolts so I could secure them tightly and not have them move around.

We ended up removing the harnesses since it looked cluttered, but I'm happy with the end result.

The second sign:

I asked Kristi what we should do about this board. I was worried it was too long. She painted it.

Kristi is a perfectionist. I always find it amusing. I took this photo and was typing a Snapchat and Kristi said, "Are you writing, 'Painting freehand is stressing this perfectionist out?'" It was super creepy because that was exactly right.

Look at that glint in her eye. She's reading your mind right now.

I had to remove and re-add the hardware so that it hung vertically instead of horizontally. I originally wanted it on the gallery wall but I loved where Kristi put it even more.

For the final piece, I unscrewed the wall art from the  back:

I didn't think we could hang it on my gallery wall because that wall is white. Kristi came up with another fabulous idea of adding ribbon to the edges.

And we hung it next to my sea painting, which is on a grey wall.

The "leftover" pieces really came in handy. I'm using the back piece to clothespin coupons and such in the office (I had the tiny clothespins leftover from that baby shower game where you can't say certain words or you steal the clothespin):

Do you remember my hearts (blog here)? I re-used the attachments holding the wall art onto the mesh:

And after a few different suggestions and tweaks...

My gallery wall is complete.

I couldn't have done it without Kristi! I am really happy with it. I may add a few more framed photos, but I think it looks fine how it is too.

Fossil Creek

I told J before summer started that I wanted to check out Fossil Creek. I heard it had a waterfall and was pretty awesome.

You have to buy a permit, and the spots fill up quick, so two months ago we bought a permit and told the family that if anyone wanted to go, they needed to buy one too. My oldest nephew Matt bought one so we planned out the day.

There is a 14 mile dirt road. Which didn't sound so bad at first, until you consider the fact that you just crawl along. J was cracking up because we got stuck behind two high profile vehicles and he wanted to pass them in his low to the ground car.

There are park rangers that check your paperwork and make sure you have a permit. I had googled the best place to park so we were in the Fossil Creek Bridge lot. Come to find out, that is the best swimming hole area, but I wanted to check out the waterfall. We really should have parked at the Waterfall Trailhead parking lot. So we had to walk an 1.35 miles one way. The hike to the waterfall is a two mile round trip, so we definitely got our walking in.

Before we hit the waterfall we came to a little spot where we sat down to eat our sandwiches, and we explored a bit.

The water was cold and it was rainy, but that didn't stop Matt or Jaylee.

Breezy made sure to keep out of the water.

We climbed up to where people were cliff jumping.

The waterfall was off to the right of where I'm standing here.

You can see Breezy down below. That's where we sat to watch Matt, Austin, and Jaylee jump off the cliff. I was pretty impressed with them.

They swam across to get to the other side, but J and I headed back down.

That's to the left of the waterfall, where they swam over. Then they swam back and jumped from the right.

We decided we wanted to go under the waterfall.

After we were done, we hiked back to the car and checked out the swimming hole area.

We definitely tired out the Breeze.

It was a fun day. It's nice having a nephew who is old enough to drive his own car and take his own passengers. We are already planning for next year.

There was one point where Breezy was trying to put on her shoes, so I grabbed her arm to steady her. Then I shook her a little to tease her. I grinned and said, "I'm a blessing and a curse Breezy." She grinned back and told me, "You are a blessing who likes to have fun." New life motto. Someone put that on a t-shirt for me.

Also, Matt thought he could swing out over the creek and come back dry:

https://youtu.be/DP5Kr_uD7s0