Isabelle - Scrapbook Layout

I haven't taken the time to scrapbook much lately, but since I've been taking photos of the kids lately I decided to put together this collage of Isabelle. These digital paper flowers really inspired this layout and even better were on sale for $.99 at my favorite website - Designer Digitals.

I really love digital scrapbooking. It has freed me of feeling like everything needs to be absolutely perfect when I sit down to scrapbook. I have a digital camera so it's super easy to take my photos off my camera and boom create a layout. I don't have to print until I want to and if I don't like something in my layout I can just delete it or keep playing with it until I like the way it looks. I can upload my layouts to Costco and I currently have a ton needing to be printed. This Christmas I created a memory book for Jordan's family of our summer vacation. I just created layouts, uploaded them to Snapfish and they printed and bound it. It was the perfect little reminder of all the fun things we did together this summer.

Anyways, just trying to remember the cute things she's doing at this stage and what some of her favorites are. I shared some of them (listed below) last week along with the original pics.



Fruit Snacks - Some moms may not believe in these little treats of yummy sugarness - but we do at our house! They seem to be the calming treat that can settle down my screaming, fit throwing kids at the store. Most of the time they are eaten while out and about and Isabelle knows I ALWAYS have some on hand.

Yogurt - Isabelle AND Matthew both love yogurt. It's often the first thing she requests to eat in the morning. We also introduced them both to vanilla yogurt with grape nuts mixed in and both of them love it. It's surprising what they take to.

Coloring - Isabelle is a girl through and through. She loves to color and wants to do it all the time. The hard part is she wants to also color things she shouldn't. She has found markers a few times, namely on Christmas while I was taking a nap (they are hidden now) and colored her brand new christmas clothing, books, cloth ABC book that my mom made, one of Matthew's presents and various other things I've found or keep finding. She is only allowed to use washable crayons and even then she's having a tough time staying on the table and only coloring the paper. She gets them taken away often, but I think it's starting to sink in.

Laughing (at Matthew) - this girl has the cutest laugh ever! When Matthew gets her going it's pretty funny. She is pretty happy most of the time and such a delight in our home.

Eating - Like I mentioned last week, this girl can eat! For example tonight she had: 1/4 PB sandwich, almost a can of peaches and a can of oranges. I'm not saying her food is high in calories, but shouldn't her tummy be hurting from all the food inside of it? Matthew on the other hand forcefully had 2 little pieces of chicken and then a can of oranges as well.

Reading Books - She loves to read and we have so many books that they got a book holder for Christmas. It has helped our books stay way more organized. When we had them in a basket, she would just take them all out and read them all, but scatter them everywhere.

We were reading the Mr. Brown Can Moo book tonight and she can pretty much make all the sounds. What does an Owl say? Hoo Hoo - so cute!

Binkie & Blankie - Oh my do we have a BIG problem on our hands. Isabelle LOVES her binkie and blankie (any thin blanket is good). If she finds her blankie she wants her binkie and visa versa. They are very comforting to her and I'm letting it go right now. She's pretty cute though if she's using them in the car and we get to the gym I tell her I need them so we can go play and she gladly hands them over.

Singing & Dancing - She's pretty good at singing and knows words to several songs. She loves to dance around and often I wonder how it is that children are so carefree and as adults we lose that capability? She's a pretty good little dancer and I can't wait until she's old enough to get into dance. I just got Kids Bop 19 the other day and both kids have been loving to listen to it in the car and wiggle around. So fun!

Fridge Magnets - She got these animal leap frog magnets for Christmas and inherited Matthew's old leap frog ABC fridge magnets. She loves to push the buttons to hear the songs and almost knows the ABC song (we just found the ABC magnets at the end of Dec.).

All in all so fun to see this little girl grow up. She is saying a lot of words and will try and say anything really. She's starting to put 4 word sentences together and often exclaims happily "I did it myself".

Matthew...not Matt, Matty or anything else

Matthew DOES not like nicknames or shortened ways to say his name. He is Matthew through and through and if you try and call him anything else he'll tell you that his name is Matthew or sometimes Matthew Jordan Stephens.


It's tough to get a good pic of him lately because he just wants to be silly and/or make silly faces but I managed to get this one the other day.


He really loves to laugh, joke and just be silly. It's definitely fun around here, but sometimes the silliness is too much especially when trying to get ready for school. He definitely makes us laugh though and is too smart for his own britches.





This kid hates to eat unless it's candy, cookies, chips or treats. Not too hard to convince him to eat some swirly soft ice cream from Costco.


He was just veging out watching TV with his shades to "protect his eyes". He is such a creative soul and really makes us laugh often with his antics.

Silly IsaBelly

This sweet girl of ours is really such a joy to have in our family. She definitely is fiesty and opinionated, but most of the time sweet and cute. Just wanted to share a few pictures that I've taken of her lately.


She got this farm fridge magnet set for Christmas and loves dancing to the music and putting the animals together. I just wanted to catch her in the action.

Isabelle LOVES reading books! She looks at/reads them several times a day and books are always scattered throughout the play room. I'm hoping this will stay a love throughout her life.

Isabelle also loves to color. She definitely is a girl. She wants to color, loves stickers, likes to be pretty (that's how I convince her to sit still while I do her hair). It is really fun having another girl around here.

She has the cutest giggle ever. The one person that can really make her laugh is Matthew. He can just be running around the house or hiding from her and she thinks it's so hilarious. It's cute to watch them both play together. Matthew is a really good brother for the most part and really loves his sister.

One other thing that Isabelle loves to do is eat. She can out eat Matthew at almost every meal, but is still so tiny. She is 21 months and wears mostly 12-18 month clothes.

I can't believe she'll be 2 in just a few months. It seems like yesterday that I was going in for my c-section with her. We are so blessed she's in our family.

In the Kitchen...with ME!

I have been wanting to do a food blog for a long time, but with work and the kids it was just too much to tackle. Now that we've moved and I'm taking a break from work I decided it was time to start my food blog. The purpose of my blog is to:


1-Share my yummiest and newest recipes I've found.
2-Get YOU to experiment more.
3-Give you tricks and tips for more successful cooking.
4-Share my favorite cooking tools.


I'm way excited! Feel free to sign up as a follower and you'll get an email when new posts are posted. Also, feel free to share my blog with your friends.


In The Kitchen With Karin

Are These My Pants?

A couple of weeks ago Jordan told me that he accidentally put on my jeans one morning and even though he could get into them they were very tight in an important area. He took them off and realized they were mine. When he told me that I thought it was so funny and couldn't imagine how he got them mixed up.

Fast forward to this past Friday. Jordan did laundry (yes you know where this is going) and lots of pants were in our laundry basket folded nicely to be put away. I grabbed a pair of boot cut 1969 gap pants out of it and put them on. They fit really well but were a little loose in the thigh and crotch area and were a bit different of a wash than I remembered. I thought it was all weird but went on with my day. My brother Brent and his wife Sam were coming into town and I needed to finish getting ready for them, Matthew had preschool and I had gone to the gym so it was a very busy day getting ready for the weekend company. When I went to bed that night at 1 am I went to look at what brand my jeans were again and saw a 31/32 size and started busting a gut.

I had worn Jordan's pants all day and didn't realize it. Yes they were looser and a different wash than I remembered, but I was sure they had said bootcut and 1969 gap jeans which they did say they were just Jordan's. I also have the same brand of gap jeans but mine are the womens cut.

All in all I guess we both like to get in each other's pants....:) :) :).

Joking Around...

We are adjusting well here in Oregon. Matthew started preschool this week and we are getting into a good routine. The other day while at the store Matthew said to me: What game do pirates like to play? Caaaards (in his best pirate voice). That seriously cracked me up and has started a lot of JOKING around here at the Stephens household. For example...

• What are pirates favorite bone? The aaaaarm
• What is a pirates favorite color? Aaaaaarnge
• What do you call cows that eat the grass? A law-mooer
• What do cows like to look at at night? The moooon
• What is a sheep's favorite color? Blaaaack

These are just a few of the hilarious (wink, wink) jokes flying around here. The best part is that Matthew thinks these are hilarious and laughs hysterically every time at these awful dumb jokes so it makes us laugh too. Isabelle jumps on the bandwagon and starts fake laughing too. It's been fun and silly lately while we are going to preschool, the gym, or running errands.

p.s. Look for a new blog coming from me soon all about cooking and my favorite and new recipes. I've wanted to do this for awhile and now have more time to explore recipes and document them.

Adjusting...

Lots of adjusting going on at the Stephens household. Monday - Friday I wasn't feeling so great about moving here and longing for a lot of the things I knew from Arizona. Stresses I felt from the last week:

• Our house was a complete disaster. Jordan put away a lot of stuff while I was in Utah, but the kitchen wasn't organized the way I needed it to be and I felt really frustrated I couldn't find what I needed in order to function in this house (I mean really I felt like I couldn't find a single thing in this house, my room, the kids rooms - you name it and I couldn't find it).
• Matthew was dealing with the change with a lot of disobedience - backtalking, peeing his pants, disobeying lots of rules.
• Last week it was raining a ton and COLD.
• I'm dealing with a lot of personal change. Staying home with the kids full-time and everything that goes along with that is a new way of thinking about myself and my role in this household. Not bringing in money is a bit tough on my ego.
• I'm feeling guilty about being completely behind on all things Christmas related.

Changes that we've made during the week and this weekend to help make this a smoother adjustment:

• ORGANIZATION - Working on cleaning up and organizing the house. The bottom is in good condition and I completely reorganized the kitchen to what works better for me. We've made good progress and we only have a little bit of Isabelle's room, our room/bathroom, and the craft room which both are huge undertakings but I think we can finish this week.
• MATTHEW - Changing my attitude with Matthew. He can make my temper flare and push my buttons to the max effectively. I've had to give myself a serious talking to and really tell myself to keep calm and just keep being consistent. We've moved timeout to the garage with the door closed. I know it sounds extreme but after about 6-7 timeouts this way on Thursday I think Matthew is getting it. He's cooperating better and if he forgets to obey I only get to about count 2 and he's decided he wants to obey. I'm also trying to be better in telling him the great things he's doing. I'm trying to loosen up on things that ultimately don't matter. If he wants to take 1 hour to eat 4 chicken nuggets and he isn't bothering me and is staying at the table then I'm just not going to care anymore. It's a work in progress but I'm hoping in a few months he'll be adjusted and his behavior will really improve.
• RAIN & COLD - I had a 40% off coupon to the Gap and went and bought myself a new lightweight jacket that is perfect for Oregon. I really love it and it's helping me not be as cold. Me + cold + rain = 1 ornery wife/mommy. The downpour rain really sucks, but a light drizzle I can deal with.
• SELF WORTH - I'm still working on the whole not working and staying home with the kids bit. Yes, I really love having a flexible schedule and not getting up to get ready for work. I love running errands during the day and having dinner under control before Jordan gets home from work. I love going to the gym during the day so I don't have to go late at night. I love being able to watch a show, read a book or rest while Isabelle is taking her nap and Matthew is having quiet time (a new thing we started too for my sanity). I do miss the other adult interaction and the good work I did. I'm still trying to not feel guilty about not working outside the home, but can attest that being a stay at home mom IS the hardest job out there. I just need to train my brain to think differently about all of this and I do know that being home with them IS really important right now.
• CHRISTMAS - We did a lot of decorating on Sunday evening and it feels pretty Christmasy now. I'm still way behind on projects but will be buckling down this weekend and next week to get everything done. I did get our stocking advent activities all organized last night and everything printed and in the socks. I almost bagged the whole thing, but I know it will be a fun family Christmas thing to do and finally convinced myself it was better to start late then not do it at all.

I'm working on the glass half full theory and having a positive attitude. We have been impressed with how friendly people have been. My neighbor (who we rent from) invited some of the neighbors over on Thursday so I met about 4 women. 1 of them is LDS as well and she dropped off a ward Christmas party invite on Saturday for that night. We are usually not the type that would have gone, but we are trying to be better about putting ourselves out there. We had a good time and met some people so Sunday wasn't bad at all. We had so many people come up and introduce themselves so we are already feeling really great about our neighborhood, our neighbors, our ward and making new friends. We even had a family invite us over for dinner and went tonight. The wife loves reading too so I think we'll start a bookclub when the New Year starts. I made a call today to a preschool that I've heard has an opening and is really good so I am hoping to hear back tomorrow as Matthew needs some friends and the learning environment of school.

Things are looking up and this weekend and today I have really felt that we are here for a reason and that it's going to be a good place to be for awhile.