The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

I just finished reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebeca Skloot.  I'm not usually a science-y kind of person but I thought this book was fascinating.  It was the perfect mix of scientific information and the story of Henrietta's family.  A sliver of Henrietta's tumor was taken for research without her knowledge and later her cells were the first to ever grow in a laboratory.  They have been used for all kinds of valuable medical research  and are worth millions of dollars now.  Henrietta's family didn't find out about her famous and valuable cells until decades later.  They lived in poverty and were mostly uneducated so they struggled to understand the significance of Henrietta's cells.  The book brings up very interesting issues but at the same time isn't too heavy.  Truly, it was a marvelous way to start my summer reading.

We got Jimmer!!!!!!!!!

Tonight I celebrated a first in my life- my first time watching and kind of caring about the NBA draft.  And, guess what, it was well worth it.  Because THE Jimmer Fredette is coming to MY Sacramento Kings (not exactly mine, but I have been to 2 games so they practically are mine.)  I'm planning on a lot more Kings Games in my future.  

Virginia is for Lovers

We are loving being in Virginia.  Jillian has all the attention and love she could ever dream of.  She adores her aunts, uncle, and grandparents.  Almost every morning, my mom comes and gets Jilly at 6:30 and I sleep in for another hour or two (or three.)  Someone is always playing with Jillian, and I never have to ask them to, they beg me to get her!  My only complaint is how much we miss Bryan. But, we've been able to Skype with him almost every day.  Today when we were skyping my sister asked Jilly who it was and she said, "dada."  She hasn't learned to talk but it was a very cute coincidence.

Jenn's Graduation- we're so proud of her!

Jilly's first Chick-fil-a, an Anderson family fave

Playing at the pool

Swinging in the backyard

 They may kill me for this, but it was too much of a good opportunity to miss out on a picture.  We've had a blast playing Just Dance on the Wii- even my parents can bust a move.

Hair Bows

Before we left, I rushed to complete lots of projects including some new hair bows for Jilly (as if she didn't already have enough...)  These seemed easy and cute, so I made them with my own little twist.  I made all of mine different sizes, but my favorite size (the pink one on Jilly) was 3" x 3 1/2".

{Sorry for a naked model- we were busy packing and crafting so things like getting dressed took a back seat.}

Instead of sewing only around 3 sides like the tutorial says, I sewed around the whole thing except for about an inch on one side.  It was still easy to pull through and then the corners looked more even.

After pulling through I topstitched over the whole bow then twisted it and used floral wire to keep it tight.  I wasn't in love with the wire being visible so I cut a little strip about 1 inch wide and 2ish inches long and ironed the edges in so it looked nice.  Then I hot glued the strip around the middle.  (I hope that makes sense, I meant to take pictures during this step but it didn't happen, sorry.)

Finished bows

seven months

I love her so so much

In other news- we are leaving for the airport in 7 hours and I just spent the last 30 minutes removing items from my suitcase so it is now officially 49 pounds (big sigh of relief.)

Final Weekend

Jilly and I are leaving on Tuesday to be in Virginia for a month (crazy, yes, but we are so so so excited!)  Bryan is going to come out eventually but we'll be away from him for two and a half weeks- so sad!  This weekend we decided to enjoy all our favorite things in Sacramento.

Friday- Rivercats Baseball Game with the Yagers and the Clements
great friends, beautiful weather, yummy dollar hot dogs, bummer of a game (but who really watches the game anyway?)

the boys

the girls (yes we segregate)

Saturday- a walk by the American River

first time exploring rocks, summer = dirty baby 

Dipping her fingers in the freeeeezing water 

Can you tell what I did Saturday morning?  Chopped 6 inches off my hair!

Friday Night- dinner and a Black and Tan at Leatherby's  (using our groupon- yea!)

Sunday- celebrating Father's Day a week early 

helping Dad open his present 

 she's very proud of her first gift (and I'm proud I actually got her handprints because it was tough!)

playing in the park

True Love = Letting your husband keep the computer at home for 2.5 weeks (there are computers at my parents' house, but I have to compete with 6 other people including a sister obsessed with eBay shopping and another obsessed with Farmville on FB)

True Love = Sharing your suitcase with your baby (I'm just planning on her looking really cute and me wearing the same thing all month long)

A girl after my own heart

Jillian is catching onto life's joys rather quickly.  Her favorite thing in the house these days is our laptop.  She looooooves to push the buttons and generally wreak havoc on whatever is currently on the screen.  Through her efforts, I've learned all sorts of keyboard shortcuts I never knew existed.

She has mastered the army crawl, but is very particular about what is worth crawling for.  Crawling to her mom?  No thanks.  Crawling to her dad?  Nope.  Crawling to her toys?  No way.  Crawling to the laptop?  YES!!  Here she is in action



Pretty soon I'll find her writing her own blog or wasting way too much time on Pinterest and facebook.

Skirts

I'm not sure if it was Pinterest, Kayla's skirts, or the fact that I am in love with my sewing machine these days but I got a major itching to make a skirt this Spring.  Luckily, my friend Emily is a skirt-making pro and was willing to be my patient teacher.  Miranda joined in on the fun as well.

Emily had a skirt already that we liked so she just made up a pattern from that skirt (the girl is a genius.)  It took a lot more time than we had planned, but we had so much fun picking fabric, measuring, cutting, stitching, ripping stitches out, and stitching again.  We made them with elastic waistbands which made our lives much easier.  Miranda and I weren't planning on being twinners but we both loved the fabric.  Plus, we thought it would be exhilarating to wonder every time we wore the skirt if the other was going to show up in it as well.

We debuted our skirts at our Relief Society Garden Party (lovingly called "Relief Society Prom" by Miranda because of the extensive planning and decorating that went into the event.)  I'm pretty sure everyone was jealous of us.

{Miranda, Emily, Me}

We already have plans in the works for our next skirt and I'm so excited!!

siiiiiiiiiiiick

We live in feline-ville.  Everyone around us has a cat.  There also is a stray cat whose owners used to live in our apartment but left without him (if I was a better person I would feel sorry for him.)  Ever since the day we moved in he has been trying to slip in our house or car when we are not looking.  One time he made it in the house and it may have been the loudest Bryan has ever heard me scream.  Another time I noticed that he had a large wound and was bleeding.  I'm just a little ashamed to admit that I hoped that maybe that would be the end of our stray.  The day after I noticed the injury we saw our neighbors out looking at the cat.  The woman said, "I feel so bad for him!  Do you know anything about cats?  What can we do for him?"  Without thinking I replied, "Oh yeah, I saw that he was hurt yesterday, um... I don't know anything about cats."  At the time I was pregnant and I'm pretty sure my neighbors were concerned that this heartless woman was about to mother a child.

The cat spends much of the day out on our patio which doesn't thrill me, but I guess it's better than inside my apartment.  Last night I looked through our sliding glass door and noticed the cat doing some sort of dance out there.  I don't have a lot of cat experience but I immediately had a terrible idea of what was going on.  I moved closer to confirm my nasty suspicion- the cat was tossing a dead mouse around on my patio.  I may never leave my apartment ever again.

This picture has absolutely nothing to do with the nasty, repulsive cat but I didn't want to leave you with such a terrible image and my sister told me the other day that I hadn't posted a picture of Jilly in a while and "that's the only reason I look at your blog."  So, this one's for you Jenn.

You've got a Minute to Win it

Everyone should have friends like ours here in Sacramento.  They're always thinking of fun things for us to do (remember Chopped and Jelly Belly Factory?)

This week it was Minute to Win It.

Challenge #1- Cup Stacking- you make a tower out of 36 cups then deconstruct your tower into one stack.  This should come as quite a shock but I actually won this challenge (probably because I was the last one to go so I got to see everyone else's tricks.) 

Challenge #2- Chopstick Stacker- You had to use chopsticks to stack 4 chapstick tubes.  This was much harder than it looks, especially for people like me who have no clue how to use chopsticks.  Tommy was the chopstick master of the night.

Challenge #3- Penny Sucking- You had to pick up 27 pennies with a straw one at a time and drop them in a cup.  By this time Jilly was needing lots of parental supervision so I only got a picture of Tommy.  But, Kiel dominated this challenge.

Unfortunately there was no million dollar prize, but Emily did make some delicious cookies that were tempting even to Jillian

kissy kissy

Jillian has lately developed a great love for giving kisses.  We find it absolutely delightful despite the fact that her kisses involve a full on open-mouth slobber fest all over our faces.

Happy Friday!

Chocolate Cookies

 I'm going to let you in on a secret.  I love cookies (that's not the secret) and this recipe is my absolute favorite.  Every time I make them people ask me for the recipe and I'm almost embarrassed to give it because it is so eeeeeeasy.  This recipe is possibly my greatest contribution to mankind (besides Jilly.)

chocolate cake mix (we like chocolate fudge best, but every kind works)
2 eggs
1/3 cup oil

Mix together, then add chocolate chips for an extra chocolatey taste.  Bake at 350 for 8 minutes.  We like our cookies nice and gooey so we undercook.  You could probably cook them for 10 minutes and they would still be delicious, just more solid.

Super easy, but absolutely, perfectly delicious!

a very Britney weekend

This weekend my old roommate Britney came to visit and we had such a great time together.

Jillian loved playing with her new friend.

We spent a day with lovely Lisa.  Brit got to meet Baby Blake and Lisa fed us an amazing barbecue.  We were all missing our fourth roomy Judi!

Jilly got to see and attack her boyfriend Blake

The Bryans were there too- but they left on a 31 mile bike ride so we could have some good girly time.  (ps- like Bryan's new look?  It lasted for a week but he got sick of it and shaved yesterday)

We walked around the beautiful Sacramento Temple

There are hardly any pictures of just Jilly and me so Britney was kind enough to take one, but Jillian was too distracted by the pretty flowers to look at the camera.  Oh well.

We also:

played Farkle (my new obsession, and Britney's too after she beat us every single game)

watched movies

shared a Black and Tan from Leatherby's

had a picnic

went running and on a walk

made cookies

braided hair

talked and talked and talked (my jaw was sore from talking so much!)