new blog

there is a new blog in town. this current one decided to be lame and not allow me any more space for pictures. and pictures are key.

so i hope you will all follow me over to the new blog:

whambamgarrisonfam.blogspot.com

you'd be surprised at how many different names i had to try before blogger accepted this one. i guess there's quite a few garrison families out there.

so pleeeeeaaasse, follow me at the new blog. xoxo.

CATALINA ROOMMATE RETREAT///MAY 2012

colette, lora, afton, cristine, brittany

college days with these girls were fun. but what's even more fun is now we can take trips together and reminisce about all that fun! and create even more fun memories! the fun-ness is astounding. and as collette so eloquently announced to everyone at karaoke: "we're just moms on vacation." we lived it up yessiree bob, as only five, young, married, mormon, non-drinking moms can. we shopped, we ate, we drove the golf cart, we escaped would-be attackers/hitchhikers on multiple occasions, we over-dramatized our near-death experiences more than once, we talked, we laughed, we tanned and we took pictures. by golly did we take pictures. here's to the next reunion girls!

THE ELEVENTH MONTH

this is it. freak out time. it's the last month before the big change. and now, just two more weeks til scott and i have a 1 year old, and officially start crying over how fast time goes and how much he's grown and all that he's accomplished. you'd think the kid was about to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. but he's kind of a big deal so i'm allowed to be dramatic. he's like the Justin Beiber in my life. i just can't get enough. i got the fever. "baby, baby, baby, oh!"

he said Mama for the first time a couple weeks ago. actually he whined it. he crawled up to my feet, pulled himself onto my legs, nearly yanking my pants down and pathetically pleaded, "Mama...Baba!" it was so sweet. and sad that he was that hungry he felt he needed to break the communication barrier. now i hear "mama" a million times a day.

and boy is he a ham! he loves to blow raspberries on my legs, try and playfully bite my toes, dance (his trademark move is the pelvic thrust), shriek so high-pitched that dogs have been deafened, growl as he plays with his dinosaurs, bang on his eating tray, feed me bits of food, and crazily crawl around in circles. i absolutely love it.

and on June 25th you can bet i'll be singing this special little classic (click below)... along with happy birthday of course.

DODGERS FAN

or maybe he's just a french fry fan. i'm gonna say both. jake did so well at his first Dodgers game! i was all prepared to enjoy only a few innings before we'd have to leave with a cranky, jet-lagged baby. but he was golden. not a peep. he happily sat on grandma's lap and devoured a bucket of french fries. it was awesome. he even got up and "sang" "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" with grandpa. i think grandpa was in heaven. since Jake was born my dad has said over and over again, "All I want to do is take my grandson to a Dodger game and eat a Dodger dog." well two wishes came true that night. grandpa got to introduce his grandson to the greatest team in the league. and Jake had a never-ending supply of french fries. it was perfection.

super blurry. but had to be added. its the seventh inning stretch. mom was worried jake might fall over the edge :)

THE NEXT JUSTIN BEIBER

sometimes you just gotta give yourself up to the music.

video courtesy of my awesome cousin Chloe.

LINA LOU

so because she is gorgeous i must share some pictures of my littlest sis' mormon prom a couple weeks ago. but lets be honest, it's really all about the dress. and let me be more honest, i'm bragging here. because I picked out the dress. :)
story time:

have you ever been to the Fashion District in LA? well, it's scuzzy. pretty dirty. yucky-city. BUT...there is one shop there that is amazing. two stories high and packed, let me repeat that, packed from floor to ceiling with prom and pageant dresses ranging up to well over a thousand dollars in price. (a thousand dollars was not our budget :) but of course every dress i swooned over was at least $1,200. again, a little much to spend on a mormon prom :)

because the place is so popular and because their dresses are so expensive (i imagine) there is a very strict rule kept in force: you can only try on 5 dresses. max. and not one more. if you don't find your dress in those 5 you picked, then you have to come back another day. it's major pressure and a big stress-inducer. especially for little lina--who, now lina let's be frank, gets a titch irritable while shopping. so we go through the five dresses we picked. nada. there was one...but no....not the one. lina was getting irritable. a wee bit cranky-pants.

i thought it was all over. i was depressed because lina didn't choose the little form-fitting, marigold, runway-worthy number. but in hindsight, it was too mature for her. so we head over to the original store location across the street where it was quiet and deserted. just to check. it wasn't as glamorous as the new location. there were no chandeliers and plasma tvs airing fashion week. but it felt a little more relaxed in there without a consultant counting the dresses in our arms or pushy, jersey shore entourages ramming their way down the aisles.

mom, lina and i split up. we scoured the racks quickly because we weren't sure how much time we had left on our parking meter! mom would show lina a dress, "this one?" no. then i'd show her a dress, "how about this one?" no. no, no. no, no, no, no. no. no. no. no. no. no. no. no. no. get the picture? i get to the very last rack tucked close to the back wall.

"oooooooo! lina, what about this?"

"that looks a little crazy, cristine." lina was not too into it. but i was persistent. it looked different and fun. very age-appropriate :)

i made her try it on. i helped lina into the dresses this time, and when mom saw my skills she said, "why didn't we have you help her in the other store?!" they forget i did work in a bridal store for heaven's sake!

the dress slips over lina's cute bod and................"(big intake of breath) i think this is the one!"

i rest my case. i am the master dress-picker. never doubt me again, sister. (plus it's a confidence booster to know that maybe you're still with it and a high schooler likes the dress you picked out :) and what's even greater, the dress had two long sashes at the back. perfect for adding sleeves.

and she is gorgeousness. a water-colored, Caribbean, curvy beauty.  and all dramatizing aside, i feel grateful that i was in california to shop with her. to see her eyes light up and witness her happiness. thanks, lina lou. i love you!

sparkly TOMS. the only way to complete an outfit :)
and thanks melissa for inspiring me to share my sister's proms pics too! miss you gurl.

LEAVE IT TO BEAVER

a certain little someone has developed a hankerin' for crib wood chips.

JAKESTER'S EASTER///2012

easter was...what...like 3 weeks ago, you say? yeah, i know. let's just say a horrific diaper change ruined our family easter pic. and since scott was the one who changed him (i was teaching YW) the details of the experience were pretty dramatic. it left scott traumatized, me agitated and jake in a back-up outfit that didn't match. our family pic plans under the humungous oak tree in the church's lawn were foiled.

but c'est la vie. oh bla dee. oh bla dah. life goes on. and you take the easter pics three weeks later. plus, i think jake's grown even more stud-muffinly since easter. so it's a winning situation.

jake received books, shoes, his easter quilt, an animal sound puzzle and lots of candy that was more for decoration and mommy and daddy. his favorite thing that day, hands down, was the easter basket itself and the cardboard wrapper around my See's Bordeaux egg. he went to town on that thing. the kid loves paper.

happy belated easter everyone!

jake is a very good sharer :)

FARMER'S WIFE SAMPLER QUILT

so i'm addicted to quilting, remember? that's old news. the new news is that i'm feeding my current obsession by dedicating myself to making 111 different quilt blocks by the end of the year. it's all *this blog's* fault. fussy cut is hosting a quilt along (cool right?) from the book, "the farmer's wife sampler quilt." a compilation of letters from 1920's farm wives and the 111 blocks that their letters inspired. again, cool right? i'm totally into the romanticism of the "olden days." so it's right up my alley. i live for this kind of stuff.

each block is different and so i figured it would be a good way to practice different patterns and learn a bit of history along the way. plus i'm trying my hand at being patient and having a long-term quilting goal. i'm piecing this together by machine because hand piecing every little part of this quilt just seems ri-donk-ulous. but i am, as of right now, planning on hand quilting the whole dang quilt--adding to the long-term-ness of my project. we shall see. it's quite ambitious and maybe a little too patience-required for my liking.

so here are my first four blocks. that basket handle was a beast. i wanted to go scrappy like fussy cut--using lots of different fabrics and not necessarily matching. but alas, i am a newbie, and so i don't have as many cool-io, designer fabric options as she does. hers just looks awesome. see.

i covet her fabric selection.
it makes me hate my blocks.
but the good news is i'll be in LA in less than two weeks and plan on raiding Michael Levine's.
aka fabric heaven.
perhaps fabric heaven will help me earn the title of honorary farmer's wife.

JAKE IS 10 MONTHS, BABY!

there are times when i look at him and think, "slow down! stop growing up!", but more and more i have the thought of, "i can't wait to see what you'll do next! i can't wait to see you as a little boy!" his hair is starting to curl at the ends and he's pulling himself up on his feet and tugging on my pants when he wants to be picked up and it is all so wonderful. it's a marvel to watch him grow into my little boy and become less and less of a baby. yes, sometimes i shed a tear or two when i watch home videos of him cooing at me and just sitting still in my arms cuddling, but then i remember how fun life is with a shrieking 10 month old crawling at my feet, getting in the trash, pulling down the hand towel for the 1,387th time, and staring up at me with those inquisitive, darling blue eyes. he makes life an adventure and we are so happy he is ours.

hah. oh man. caught red-handed. i fear this boy will be veeerrrryyyy mischievous.
**and is anyone else ultra-depressed that picnik is gone?**

THINGS I LERNT LIVIN' IN THE SOUTH

i tell you what! i love the sayings and phrases around these parts. i love the country accents, the food like lemon catfish with hush puppies and the church-going, God-fearin' lifestyle. never, in all my girlhood dreamings and fantasies of married life, did i envision myself here in tennessee. but i truly love it. and it's good for jokes, too. because tennessee and the tennesseans that live here crack me up constantly.

where else would you hear a fellow young woman leader say, "halleluJER!"? i can barely stand to write it, it's so hilarious.

where else could you go and have farm fresh eggs sold to you by one of your young women? and have her call the money she earns "egg money"? i thought that only existed in Little House on the Prairie.

where else could you go and have a visiting teaching lunch date that centered around horses and their varying personalities and food preferences? i tell you what, i learned a lot about the difference between hay and straw that day.

my parents recently forwarded me an email titled, "Things I Lernt Livin' in the South." now, i don't usually read forwards. they usually get sent to the deleted folder faster than you can say, "darn tootin'." but this one i curiously read with an "oh geez what" kinda attitude. and i'm glad i did, because it made me realize the funny things i hear around town. here is a sampling:

Things I Lernt Livin' in the South:

• It is not a shopping cart, it is a BUGGY! --totally true and especially funny when you hear mothers yelling at their kids to, "mind the buggy now.".
• If it grows, it'll stick ya. If it crawls, it'll bite cha. --hoping this doesn't happen anytime soon.
• Onced and Twiced are words.
• Fixinto is one word. It means, "I'm going to do that." -- example I hear: "I'm fixinto go to the store." love it.
• Iced Tea is appropriate for all meals, and you start drinkin' it when you're two. --so true. though here, it's all about Sweet Tea. one day i was shopping in Wal-Mart (classy right?) and a group of college guys were all discussing the menu for a party they were having that night: "....ok, we got chicken, we got salad, we got beans...did somebody get the Sweet Tea?"  "yep, right here." i don't know about you, but hearing these college guys worry about whether or not they got enough Sweet Tea was just hilarious. gotta have that Sweet Tea, and you better believe it is found in every restaurant, fast food joint, party and mechanic shop lobby around town. the only place it isn't found is among us mormons! :) we tend to stick to root beer which no restaurant carries.
• Y'all is singular and All Y'all is plural.
• Fried catfish is the other white meat. --tasty. not scary.

and some that we've personally heard around town:

•  It's not pronounced mirror. It's pronounced mirra. --that cute charlotte again.
• That don't mean a hill o' beans. --scott's boss said that to him.
• Well, he's a big 'un. --brother butler at church referring to jake.
• Can I have the fa-Gi-tas?" --mexican food names are downright impossible to say here.
• and......I tell you what. --this proceeds every declaration, opinion, story, etc. you name it.

again, never in my wildest dreams did i imagine cookeville, tennessee as my place of address. but we enjoy it.
and i tell you what...

A PAJAMA WEEK

a pajama day is fun. a pajama week...not so much. we've been sick. and it's the first time jake has ever been sick-sick, not just teething-sick, but stuffy-nose-runny-nose-puffy-eyes-fever-cranky-clingy-sick. poor guy sounds like Darth Vader and can barely breathe while drinking a ba-ba. and i've tried using the booger sucker, but it makes me fearful that Child Services are gonna come a-knockin' because of neighborhood complaints that they hear a child being tortured. seriously, why do babies hate that thing so much??

so we've watched a lot of tv and movies. and done hardly anything. just sat and stared. literally nothing. i may go crazy soon. and the never-ending handfuls of pistachios aren't helping. i'm going nutty.

i got me the quilting bug

it's in my skin. stuck fast like an imaginary tick. shall we call it a quick? (quilt + tick. get it?) well, this quick makes me impatient. yet another meaning! when i get a project going, by golly, i want it done. fast and quick-like. :) (i really love my made up word. ha!) they say quilting is supposed to be a slow process. a slow, magical art form. i simply don't have the patience. i like seeing the fruits of my labors not in a year, but tomorrow. and with quilting i may have met my match. all-nighters won't get a quilt done. it's horrible. it's killing me. i'm like a quilting version of Veruca Salt: "don't care how, i want it NOW!"

this all began in Livingston, Tennessee. say it with me. not LivinGstOn. but Livin'stEn. and it was at Charlotte's house (a fellow young women's leader.) she fed me homemade soup and rolls and gushed over jake like he was another one of her grandbabies (which are all girls.) on the couch lay her quilting hoop and a beautiful quilt. i asked about it. she showed me many of the quilts she'd made.

"And this one I've been working on for about 7 years," she said. i about died. she must be the Mother Teresa of patience. i simply don't understand it. it horrified and fascinated me all at once. she is a marvel.

and so she is to blame (lovingly, of course) for this "quick" of mine. i had decided to make a quilt for Jake for Easter. i had visions of grandeur in my head as i walked into the quilt shop and asked the dear, sweet owner to help me match some fabrics to a picture i had found online.

"do you have a pattern for this quilt?" she asked looking at me hard behind her spectacles. (i want glasses.)

"no......?"

"oh honey," she said. crap. "you'd be setting yourself up for failure."

"...."

i didn't say anything to that because half of me was devastated i couldn't make this quilt i loved and the other half of me was totally offended! she doesn't know the mad skills i have! (and by skills, i mean i'm a total beginner. i have no clue what i'm doing. but if impatience was a skill i would be unbelievable.)

so she steered this doe-eyed quilt dreamer towards the quilt patterns and showed me the ones that would help me "succeed" at quilting. i hated them. she may as well have just said, "you're too little to go on the big ride. why don't you go sit on the see-saw." i hate being told what to do and that i can't do something. i hate that.

but as she talked and showed me a sample quilt made from one of the "i'm a baby quilter" patterns, i began to lighten up and realize-- dang it-- she was probably right. so with a pattern, some fabrics and a harsh dose of reality i left the shop.

and i finished the quilt by Easter. and nestled it by his basket. and i am pretty pleased. first quilt ever, and i think i did a pretty darn good job. it took me about a month. from the ironing to the measuring to the re-measuring to the cutting to the piecing to the sewing to the ironing to the re-ironing since jake would crawl all over it, to the pinning, more cutting, more sewing, more measuring, and a heapful of impatience and quilting mental madness where i wouldn't eat for hours and my hands would start to shake (very reminiscent of finals time at BYU-Idaho)........ sigh........breath......i finished. and may or may not have brought it to church to show it to Charlotte.

they were right. it is a PROCESS. and i think it's supposed to be slow to ward off the hysterics and mental breakdowns. you live and learn. but i love the quilt. i love that i made it for my Jake. and maybe he'll carry it with him wherever he goes. maybe he'll take it with him on his mission and to college. maybe he'll wrap his own babies in it and my posterity will hug it and say, "great-great grandmother Cristine made this. isn't it precious."

ha. hopefully. maybe. it's a dream. but for some reason i'm thinking Jake will not want a baby quilt on his dorm room bed when he's 19 years old. go figure right? whatever, i'm totally stuffing that quilt in his suitcase.

and maybe he'll get the "quick" too. my little Jake a quilter. ha. wow. someone quick, get my kid a basketball. 

jake's a talker

and a babbler, and a screecher, and a squeaker.
and quite the delectable lil' dude. 
i suspect he may have been a Pterodactyl in a previous life. (and who knew pterodactyl started with a "p"?!)


*oh and please ignore my paint-chipped mom toes.*

my boys are cuddlers

sometimes i think i don't write enough about my better half. he's not home with us during the day, but he is at work, slaving away, bringing home the bacon, so that i can be a stay-at-home mom. he is one in a million. and jake adores him. in fact, scott is his new favorite cuddle buddy. which scott loves! let's just say i love me some space at night and to have the cold spots in the bed all to myself. so finally having a cuddle buddy, even if it starts at 6 am every morning, is a dream come true for scott. he lays there as jake tugs on his ears, slaps his face, rests his hands on his arm in a tender little hug, and even lays there patiently and calmly when jake sneezes loud and wet right on his face.

they're just two peas in a pod. two bugs in a rug.