Willie Day '13 (and More)

Just what is Willie Day? Well, it's a long story. Someday, Rich will need to pop on here and give the full story because I will only slaughter it. For now, the following quote from Rich will have to do:

"It's so difficult to just sum up Willie Day. Stumbled upon (blessed) in 2002 and first celebrated in 2003, this BYUXC-created holiday celebrates forgiveness and all-around joy in life. Traditions include peach consumption and respect towards Willie Nelson. Miracles are astoundingly abundant."

Willie Day kicked off a little early this year with this amazing postcard from the Durhams a few days before the actual day:

Then, on Willie Day Eve, I made a peach crisp (although, unfortunately the peaches were canned since we're past fresh peach season here).

Since Willie Day fell on a mutual/scouts night but we still needed our peach offering, we hit up Zip's on our way home for the shake of the month - Peachy Peach - to close out our celebrations.

And, since Willie Day, it's been a busy week for the Nellys, full of quite a few decisions. One of the biggest is that Rich has decided to put in more hours volunteering at Gonzaga to get him some more face time and to help him get to know the office side of coaching better. And around that he still needs to fit work and school.

And, last night, rather suddenly, we bought a car! We traded in the old Dodge Stratus for a Nissan Altima. We've been getting a little worried about the Stratus for a while now, and then a couple days ago the check engine light came on. That was the last straw. If there was anything seriously wrong with it, we did not want to spend the money on repairs.

A good friend of Rich's parents works at a dealership, and they and their children have bought probably 10 cars from him over the years (not exaggerating). So, we drove out to the Valley last night, just thinking we'd look and maybe come home with a couple options. Instead, we ended up leaving the Stratus there and bringing home our new Altima.

I feel like I want to name her, but I'm terrible at that kind of thing. Any suggestions?

I'm excited for the new car, and we both feel it was the right choice. And we are not sorry to see the Stratus go. It was sad to see Vince and even my old Blazer go, but I really felt no attachment whatsoever to the Stratus. I only wish we could somehow have ended up with two cars, but I guess we'll keep making one car work.

And, of course through all of this Norah has been adorable as always. I'll end with some of my favorite pictures of her from the past week.

 She doesn't eat the crust anymore. I can't blame her, but I didn't realize that this started so young.

 She has an uneven mullet in the back, and some of her bangs almost reach to her eyes. Yeah, I have no idea what to do with it. Good thing she's adorable and can pull off anything. My sister and I have this joke that all you need to do is put a bow in a toddler's hair, and, ta da, it's done! That is definitely my theory right now (not that the clip lasts for more than three seconds).

One of her favorite ways to play is to dump out the blocks and then instantly move on to something else.

 She absolutely loves these Minnie jammies, and I have no idea why because I don't know how she would know who Minnie is. But she always fishes them out of the dirty clothes and carries them around the apartment.

We're finally getting the bump on her cheek checked out by a dermatologist next week. After Lake Powell this summer, it did this weird thing where it turned into a blister, and then went back to normal (well, what it looked like before). The doctor said to keep an eye on it, and if that happened again he'd get us in to a dermatologist. Well, it happened again on Sunday, so I called as soon as I could for an appointment. Now it just looks like a scab. I hope we get answers. In fact, I just want it removed so we don't have to worry about it anymore.

I cannot get over how adorable and old she looks in her jeans. She really isn't a baby anymore. I mean, I'm shopping in the toddler section for her now! Time is flying by so fast.

 These pants are supposed to be skinny jeans (if only skinny jeans fit me like this). You can't really tell, but I tried to capture her sag here. Size 12-18 month clothes are still way too big on her, but she's too long for a smaller size. It looks like we're going to be pulling up her pants all winter.

 I finished this dress I started for Norah over the summer, afraid it would be too small by now. Nope, way too big. Maybe it will fit her next summer.

Playtime

Wednesday. That seems like a good day to update my blog. Let's see how many Wednesdays I can keep this up.

I've decided to not be afraid to share the pictures I take on my phone. They're not very good quality, but that's how I capture almost everything because my phone (or Rich's phone) is usually right there when I want it. Plus, losing so many pictures has helped me realize that any pictures, despite their quality, are better than no pictures at all.

Many of my pictures from the past week seem to have a common theme - Norah's playtime. She is a busy girl, getting in to everything and having tons of fun in the process. She loves to "read," and her current favorite book is "Go, Dog. Go!" She cracks me up on a daily basis with the things she thinks to do.

At Grandma and Poppa Nelson's house, Norah is allowed to go to town with the tupperware drawer. Norah loves to carry it around with her, so they'll probably be finding tupperware around their house for years.

A couple days ago, I watched my friend Aubrey's little girl, Alivia, for a couple hours. She and Norah had a lot of fun together, although I learned just how much Norah needs to learn to share. 

 After lunch, I was cleaning up the kitchen, and these two come up just like this. On her own, Alivia climbed into Norah's stroller, and then, again on her own, Norah decided to push her from the family room to the kitchen. It took me a little while to stop laughing.

Norah has this fascination with standing in this toy.

I'm not much of a baker, but lately I can't stop baking this bread. Cream cheese banana bread (I left out the nuts). Do yourself a favor - bake it.

Our Dodge Stratus is getting old. Words cannot describe how much I want a new car. Actually, just a second car. The Stratus can stay, but having only one car is getting really old.

Norah was having a rough evening on Sunday, but she calmed right down when Poppa read her a story. This is one of those pictures that just melts my heart. 

And they kept reading until all the furniture was gone.

(I guess that probably needs a little explaining. Grandma and Poppa got new carpet this week, so we had to clear out all the furniture.)

This room was done, so all the furniture got moved in here.

Can you spot Norah? 

Hiding in the arm chair, buried in her books. 

I decided to make a purse using this tutorial. I love the fabric I chose, but I'm not so sure I'm in love with the bag itself.

Lunchtime sleepy eyes 

Daddy was nice enough to share his popsicle.

Norah fell in love with this scrap of leftover carpet. Apparently, she approves of Grandma's choice.

I have a feeling every week is going to be a picture overload like this. If that means I have another backup for my pictures, then so be it.

And, of course, Happy Willie Day to all! Eat your peaches and be on the lookout for Willie Day miracles! I know the Nellys will!

My Plea

Recently, our external hard drive decided to completely fail on us. The one with ALL of our pictures from ever on it.

When it happened, I had a complete meltdown. I called Rich at work, just bawling my eyes out. Stupid me, I didn't have the pictures backed up anywhere (don't worry, I've learned my lesson now). We brought the hard drive into a local computer place, and they were able to salvage almost all of our pictures from the past year and half, and that's awesome because those were all of our Norah pictures which were the most important to me. But anything that wasn't on our blog or Facebook before then is pretty much gone.

Pictures of Rich's running? Gone. Lake Powell trips? Gone. Parties? Friend get-togethers? Family vacations? Gone. Gone, gone, gone.

And I was just about to do a photo book for each year since Rich and I have been married. Shoot.

So, here comes my plea.

Would anyone who reads our blog be willing to send us any pictures you might have of anyone in our family?

Please, please, please!

I know that everyone has about a million pictures of their own, so this probably isn't an easy thing to do. But if you ever have the time to go through one of those folders with pictures from an event where the Nellys might have been, it would really mean a lot to us if you could share. We're talking forever grateful, here.

And that brings me to my new goal. I was reading through my friend Valerie's blog and was loving how many pictures she takes and posts. She tries to do (and almost always does) a post every week that talks about each day of that week, and there's almost always a picture for every day. I realized if I did that more often, losing our external hard drive wouldn't have been such a big deal. So, Val, thanks for the inspiration!

I'm posting this on here to hold myself more accountable: I want to try to do a post a week, for my own sake. I probably won't go through each day because, let's face it, being a stay-at-home with no car isn't exactly the most exciting thing, so I don't have too much to report. But I do want to try to have a picture for each day.

I hope you don't get sick of us!

I guess I'll close with a couple pictures. (I'm going to need to get better at taking more pictures, too, so I can live up to my goal.)

Norah's favorite breakfast: pumpkin waffles

Yeah, she did this on her own. Can't waste a single drop of that smoothie.

Aunt Andrea and Uncle Jed came to visit, and we got to float the Little Spokane with them. (Thanks for the pictures, Dre!)

Norah did great in the life jacket this time around - way better than Lake Powell. 

The wildlife did not disappoint on our float! Lots of ducks, some herons, a couple deer, a marmot, a beaver, and even a moose!

My cousin Cassandra gave us a new term for this disaster - a "toynado."

The peaches came on a little too early for Willie Day this year, so we had to celebrate early by going to Greenbluff for some picking. Oh my goodness, were they delicious. Norah, however, was more interested in the cows.

Norah loves to draw. Do not let her see the crayons, or you won't hear the end of it until she gets one.

Her love of drawing has led to her first drawing somewhere it shouldn't be. Luckily, it was only crayon on linoleum, so it came out easily.

Any time you sit down at the dinner table, Norah automatically folds her arms for prayers. That lasts about two seconds, but it's adorable. 

This has to be up there on my favorite Norah pictures list. It doesn't get much cuter than a messy marinara face.

It took me a little while to let Norah just go for it with the spoon. I was too afraid of the mess, but it's got to happen some time, right? (And I promise this isn't the only bib we use.)

Grad School

This is just a quick congratulations post - Rich got accepted to the Gonzaga online Master's program in Sport and Athletic Administration! We are so excited for this because we know it will be a big step for our future. As much as we're not looking forward to being poor college students again, it was too great of an opportunity for us to pass up.

In July (while we were in Utah), we decided graduate school should be the next step for Rich. He applied as soon as we got home and got accepted about a week and a half ago. He bought his books yesterday and starts classes on September 3rd. It's crazy how fast this process has gone. I feel like we don't have much time to prepare, but do we really need it? Extra time would have just been time to stress about being accepted or about starting schoolwork again. I think it's better this way.

Once again the Nellys are cheering, "Go Zags!" (And, of course, "Go Cougars," too!)