LFR

Top items on today's agenda:

-clean the house

-do the laundry

-pack the suitcases

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We're going on vacation tomorrow, bright and early. It's the 2nd-ever-biannual (meaning every 2 years, not twice a year. Biannual can mean both, you know.) Lehnhof Family Reunion. This year it's in Island Park, Idaho. It sounds really fun and the kids are very excited to see their cousins. While we're out, we'll stop at Grandma Payne's (Matt's Grandma) 90th birthday party in Orem, Utah.

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Since all three items are only partially completed and remain unchecked at the present, I'd better get scootin'.

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See you all in August...

a few more

I think my girl should be set for a while... I'm no expert, but for those of you who asked, here are my tips if your going to make your own:

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1. Don't use the lightweight clear plastic elastic.

Although it seems like a great option, the benefits of the lightweight quality don't outweigh the PAIN IN THE NECK it is to work with. There's probably a special way to use it, but despite all my various attempts, I gave up on it. It tears really easy when you stretch it while you're sewing it on. In the end, I stuck with regular elastic. It's more bulky, but much easier to use.

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2. Make a template

I just put an inch long piece of elastic in the back of the headband because I like the smooth look around the rest of the headband. Because of that, there's not a lot of stretch in the headband. I had to be pretty exact on the length the ribbon, the length of the elastic, and how much I stretched the elastic when I sewed it otherwise it was either too big or too tight on her head. I had a ribbon that measured the circumference of her head, and then cut each ribbon I was going to use one inch longer. The elastic was one inch long, and I stretched it to double it's size when I sewed it on.

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3. Use Fray Check

Before I sewed the two ends of the ribbon together to make the headband, I used fray check on the ends so that I didn't have to sew seams or have fraying edges. Since I was sewing the elastic over the seam, the fray check was sufficient.

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Nancy, I found an easy way to make my own headbands. I put fray check on the ends of the ribbon, and sewed two pieces cut from a flat hair elastic that I bought at Target. They're just regular hair elastics, but they're flat. You could probably just do the same thing with regular elastic, but I think these look nicer. They work well for the headbands, and make it super easy to do. This took me 5 minutes- tops.

One of the pieces is shorter than the other. When I wear the headband, the longer side is closer to the back of my neck. That helps the headband lay flat on my head. Good luck!

makin' headbands

I've wanted to make Lydia some new headbands for awhile and yesterday I finally got around to doing it.

It took me 4 different designs to figure out how to make the lightweight clear plastic elastic work right, but they finally turned out okay!

I couldn't get Lydia to post for a picture. She was too busy twirling around.

handsome boy

I love you, my cute little Ethan!

(Did you notice his slick new shoes?

$3.99 at the Children's Place.)

temple pageant

Pictures from our Saturday family outing to the Oakland Temple for the temple pageant:

The Pageant was very well done. Garrett and Matt (who were the only ones to watch the whole thing) loved it. Ethan enjoyed it for the first hour until he opted to join Lydia and I as we admired the fountain and temple grounds while we watched all the people of other faiths take wedding pictures at the temple. To her credit, Lydia lasted the first 45 minutes of the pageant.

a few more glausers

A few weeks ago, we had a couple of Matt's brothers here visiting for a few days. We had so much fun, but stayed up way too late visiting and were really tired!

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Mike, Meli and Lance stayed for just a couple of days before leaving for Mexico for the summer to visit Meli's family and so that Mike can try out to play profession basketball there. Dustin spent a few more days with us. We had a great time!

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These pictures are courtesy of Meli and Dustin (since I was sort of a zombie for two days and forgot to take out my camera):Garrett and Lance at Fisherman's Wharf with Alcatraz behind them

Mike, Meli and Lance

Uncle Dustin .

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We miss you all, but are looking forward to our unofficial Glauser Family reunion in August! Oh, and maybe we won't stay up so late next time and I'll actually remember to take some pictures!

are you enjoying your google reader?

Turns out it's not a perfect, huh?

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I've found that it:

1) is a little delayed on telling me about new posts,

2) doesn't show white text since it's on a white background, and

3) doesn't allow you to make comments.

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But if you don't mind:

1) being a day behind on everyone's blogs, and

2) clicking on the link at the top to see the real blog so that you can make comments and so that you can see the text if it's white or light colored then it's great, right?

(By the way, I highly recommend clicking on the links at the top of the reader and going to the actual blogs. Part of the fun of blogging is exchanging comments and seeing the different templates, colors and pictures everyone have added to their webpage to personalize it. You lose that with the reader).

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Oh, and one other thing. It brings up any old posts that have been edited too. Since I went through and added labels to a bunch of old posts, your reader is probably going to list a bunch of posts from me. Sorry about that.

late night snack

Did you try making my tomato basil appetizer yet?

Well, I've outdone myself this time. Last night I served it atop a thin piece of toasted garlic sourdough bread. AND it's made with my homegrown tomato and basil. Looks good enough to eat, huh?

to my fellow bargain hunter moms,

You may want to go check out your local Children's Place!

I rarely buy anything for full price when it comes to clothes, so you can imagine the fun of walking into The Children's Place for the sole purpose of buying Garrett a new swim suit and walked out with two huge bags and a bill of $150.

The fun of it is that I probably came home with $450-$500 worth of clothes. It's their end of the season sale, so everything is marked down to $3.99 or less. I got a fantastic stock for next summer for all my kids including swim suits, sandals, church shoes, shorts, skirts, shirts, dresses and dress shirts for the boys.

Oh, and I couldn't resist stopping on my way out of the mall to pick up these little clips for Lydia's hair. The very little hair she has is a bit out of control these days! The 20 or 30 really long ones are always sticking straight up. Maybe these will help.

ahhh

I just got back from a girls' weekend at the beach with my lifelong friend, Marci. We've been friends since we were oh, probably 8. We've been talking about doing something like this for years. After something like 3 weeks straight of going to bed feeling like I should submit an application to have Super Nanny come to my house, we decided to just do it.

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We found cheap tickets and planned a last minute trip to Southern California. Our fabulous husbands stayed home and ate pizza, wrestled, went to the park and played for hours on end with the kids while we sat on the beach for two days.

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It was divine.

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I needed a break. Marci needed a break. This was the perfect retreat. It was so fun to see Marci again. She and I often think we live the same life. We were inseperable growing up. We haven't seen each other for a year now, but when I met her at the airport on Friday morning we both had on a black skirt, pink shirt, and the same haircut.

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We always have a great time being pregnant together, too. Each of our 3 kids have birthdays within a few days or months of each other. (She's now on baby #4, but she's on her own this time!)

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We sat on the beach, slept in, ate really good food, got pedicures, shopped, and stayed up until the wee hours of the morning talking. (But we could sleep in, remember?)

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I'm home now feeling 100% recharged, grateful for a husband that values my role as a mother and wife and loves me enough to send me away for some "time off", grateful that I lost Pride and Prejudice on the airplane and pulled out Sheri Dew's, No One Can Take Your Place to read instead (I fould P&P when I got off the plane. I think it was a little bit of divine intervention. Go read it.), and grateful for a friend who inspires, motivates and uplifts me.

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Happy 4th of July

I love the 4th of July. I love celebrating America and always find myself emotional thinking about the freedom we enjoy in this country and the sacrifices that have been made throughout history for us to enjoy that freedom. I think we celebrate that far less often than we should.

I also find myself feeling a little homesick for Redlands whenever I spend the 4th somehwere else. I guess it's all those years of going to Sylvan Park, having swim races and ice cream at 5th Avenue and eating KFC on a blanket along the northwest curve of the track at the U of R stadium while we waited for the fireworks to start.

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Although we couldn't go to Redlands, we enjoyed our day of celebration here.

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Well, except for the idiots that decided to set off their own fireworks in the parking lot after the city show, even though it was prohibited. A stray landed and went off about 1 foot away from my boys. I'm still worked up over it and what could have happened if it had landed a foot closer, which is why I'm still up and can't go to sleep. It's really probably a good thing that I never found the group that set them off.

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I'm up blogging to try and get my mind off of all that so I can go to sleep, so really this play by play of the rest of our day is more for my benefit than yours but your welcome to read it.

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We really did have a great day up until that point. We went to the ward breakfast, watched the parade (but only part of it. It was something around 100 degrees today), took naps, watched Dreamer together as a family, ditched our plans to BBQ and stopped at In-N-Out instead, went swimming, rode bikes to the park and watched the fireworks show.

The fireworks show was in a field next to the Chevron headquarters, and we were able to watch from the Chevron parking lot. It ended up being the perfect set up for us. The view was unbeatable, it was only open for Chevron employees so we beat all the crowds, and the boys (who are deathly afraid of how loud fireworks are) were able to enjoy the show from inside the van.

Matt, Liddy, and I watched from our lawn chairs next to them. Two years ago, Matt missed the whole show because he had to run out of the stadium with a terrified Garrett. Last year, Garrett stayed home with Grandpa Glauser and watched from his driveway. Now Ethan has developed a fear as well. At least this year, we were altogether!

Hope you had a wonderful celebration!