we're going to new york!

can i just tell you how excited we are???

and it gets even better, we get to hang out with our good friends, nate and claire! nate got an internship for 10 weeks in new york and we get to stay with them! because they're super nice and amazing.

we're going in mid-july for 5 days and we've never been so i wanna do all the tourist-y stuff: the statue of liberty and central park and times square...and eat a hot dog from a street vendor...or maybe i'll just let paul eat one and live vicariously through him.

but, sad to say, we're leaving lil' penny home with paul's parents. we were originally gonna take her and try to make it a "family vacation" but then we started thinking how hard it would be for her being dragged all over new york, with no car, just walking everywhere...and also how hard it would be for us. so now it's our 5-year anniversary trip. :) (we'll be married 5 years on august 6th...it's close enough, right?)

i'm gonna be sad to go without penny because i'd love to take pictures with her in them...but really, she won't remember anything and she'd be miserable because we'd want to go-go-go all day...she'll have a much better time being spoiled by grandma and grandpa. now we can just do the airplane thing without a baby, and we don't have to bring all her junk, and we can properly do the tourist-y thing and not feel bad about dragging penny everywhere...it's a win-win all around really.

so...yay for new york! so excited! gimme any tips or places to go if you've been!

some bad news...but then some super great news!

bad news: paul got laid off 2 weeks ago.

super great news: he got offered a new job on friday!

it all happened so fast. his former employer (an online marketing firm) was struggling financially and had to lay off a 1/4 of their employees, including paul. you know how the saying goes...last hired, first fired. we were way bummed of course, but felt optimistic that something else would come along. and boy, did it ever.

paul was offered a job at crowell advertising, an ad agency in downtown salt lake and his first day is today! we couldn't believe it when he got the call on friday. it took almost 2 years to get a marketing position and move out of logan and it only took two weeks to get this new job! amazing.

there's so many great things about this new job:
- it's an ad agency that has more of a creative environment
- it's closer to home, only 15 minutes away. no more 40 minute commute to park city. YES!
- his pay is higher
- the benefits are better
- paul will be happier with this type of job (not to say he didn't like his previous job, i think he'll just enjoy this one more)

we are so over the moon, it's not even funny. paul has wanted to work at an ad agency for a looong time, and now that he is and that it happened so quickly, we feel rediculously blessed.

so...sometimes it rocks to get laid off and get a better job.

i'm pretty sure these are 4 of the 7 dwarves.

and i'm pretty sure these lame no make-up pictures don't really constitute as a blog post...but i've been busy.

i got accepted into the salt lake farmer's market as a craft vendor (joy!) and i've been hunched over my craft table every night snipping and cutting and sewing. it starts on june 12th so that's only about a month away...and there's alot to do. but i am so rediculously excited that i got in because, well, i'm a big huge nerd.

in other news, we gave penny chicken nuggets for the first time last night...and she LOVED them. she loves them like she is a starving child and shoves them in her mouth as fast as she can. and then she stores the chewed up nuggets in her cheeks like a happy little squirrel until i realize that she STILL hasn't swallowed those chewed up nuggets and it's time for bed so i get a baby spoon and scoop out the chicken nugget mush so that she won't go to bed with food in her mouth and choke. and then paul absent-mindedly ate one of the chicken nugget mushy chunks that i had put on her high chair tray because he thought it was a non-chewed piece and it was pretty gross. it was like the exact opposite of what a mother bird does for her babies. sometimes it's nice as an adult to have your food chewed up for you.

puppy penny

she just learned this one a few days ago...and i think it's pretty cute.

"woof woof woof!"

in the sun

i wanted to take advantage of our rediculously overgrown backyard and take some pictures before paul mows it this week. it was so warm and sunny, i love utah in the spring.

i'll be kinda sad to see the flowers go. i really love the yellows and purples. but i won't miss the bees. that's for DANG sure.

penny larsen: headband model

i'm adding some interchangeable headbands to my jellabee jr etsy shop (where the clips clip onto a piece of ribbon attached to a stretchy headband) and i had to get some shots showing how the headbands looked. i kind of realized that (duh) lots of babies don't have that much hair for a while and can't wear clips unless they're attached to a headband...paul says this will take my shop to "the next level" haha.

i haven't listed the headbands in the shop yet (still need to finish some more) but thought these pics were cute enough to share anyway.

i feel kinda silly putting headbands on her when the snap clips easily clip onto her hair, but who else would be my little model?

p.s. thanks to paul for hitting himself (lightly) on the head to make penny smile and laugh.
p.p.s. penny has learned how to say a new word...every time i would say "come on, gimme smile penny!" she'd say "NO." but it's cute hearing her little voice say it all high-pitched and gleeful so i'll let it slide...for now.

*edit: the interchangeable nylon headbands are listed! go here to check 'em out.

knott's!

we also got to go to knott’s when we were visiting my folks in california.

sitting in the ghostrider rollercoaster. nice scrunchy face, kris.

and i think we’re getting old or something because after that rickety wooden roller coaster me and paul were all sore and kind of had a headache. after one ride. and each ride after that kinda made us sore and stiff. and we actually took resting breaks in between rides. we're pretty much old fogies now.

my favorite ride: montezooma’s revenge. i know it’s short but i just love that ZOOM at the beginning.

striking a pose in camp snoopy. woot woot.

me and paul had a pretty good time…but lana and kris had to leave early because:

a) lana cut her finger that morning
b) lana had THE SAME finger smashed in the car door by paul in the knott's parking lot (he was very sorry)

c) lana threw up after our second ride
d) all of the above

(the answer is “d”). poor lana!

penny ended up catching lana’s stomach bug and threw up that night which = nasty chunky throw-up hair the next day. gross. i didn’t even hear her the whole night! she didn’t cry or anything! she just threw up and went back to sleep…funny girl. and she was pretty lethargic for the 12-hour ride home last wednesday because she was still a bit sick, so that was kind of nice…in a backwards way. (she's totally fine now...just a little 24-hour bug.)

and now we’re back to snow and rain! yay for spring in utah…