Updates

-It's still snowing in Idaho.....Not really an update because hello, it's Idaho. I'm so ready for spring! Our entire spring break was filled with snow/rain. AWESOME. not.

-We celebrated Noah's 1st birthday on the 18th. We just did pizza and a cake here at our house on his actual birthday, because we had such great plans of taking him to the zoo in SLC....those plans were crushed due to the weather :(






I had to add this next picture because it's Noah's favorite face to make. He usually does it when we are out in public and just stares at someone while making this face. We've had some awkward moments. lol.


-We were originally heading down to Utah on Mon-Tues of Spring Break. But, husband was itching to get out of here and I found some killer hotel deals, so we ended up leaving early on Sat and Staying til Mon. We stayed at the Peery Hotel, and got it for $40 a night!


(It conveniently has my favorite restaurant on the bottom floor...Macaroni Grill)

-I did not take one photo in Utah. Sad, I know. We drove to Utah in a snow blizzard and drove home to Idaho in the rain. Sad, Sad, SAD. We didn't go to the zoo, but mainly ate, shopped, and visited with friends.

-I went to the dentist yesterday thinking I was getting a crown put on....I had had one before so I was expecting to go in there, have them pop it on and walk out. Didn't happen. It turns out, the dentist hadn't fitted my for the crown. When he took out the HUGE needle, I knew I was in trouble. He had to grind down my tooth, remove the build up and put on a temp crown. Is it just me, or does anyone else get complete anxiety just walking into the dentist office? Teeth freak me out. I can handle brushing or whitening them and that's it!!!! Half way through the grinding, I began to feel the tool against my skin. I jumped in the air, and the dentist was like, "I wondered if this would happen.." He made me sit back down, took another HUGE needle out and shot me up in the roof of my mouth. I wanted to unload every bad word I know, but the Dentist is my old bishop, so I felt the need to keep up appearances. It hurt SO BAD though. I was honestly nauseous with the pain when I was checking out of the office. When Tyler came home for lunch, he made sure to let me know that my lip was two different sizes and my mouth was distorted looking. Thanks, love you too! haha. I am sore today. Feel like I got punched in the face.

-Tyler starts Grad School on the 1st of April. He will be getting his masters in Education Administration. He is really excited and I know he will do great!!!!

-I am planting a garden. Obviously, it will be a while before we start because of the weather. We are planning on tomatoes, romaine lettuce, cucumbers, onions, squash, peppers, and maybe some other things. Excited!!!!

That's about all our news for now. Not too exciting, I know. Until next time :)

Flashback Friday

My sister Bev is a year younger than me and we have always been really close. We were both in high school when we moved and had a lot of the same friends from church and school. In high school I had the privilege of driving my family's van aka The Hoopty or the Shaggin Wagon. It looked a little like the one below....except it was silver, with pink velvet interior and had captain seats in the back that would swivel and a bench seat that folded down into a bed. It also had a table in the back with built in cup holders and even had the ladder on the back, just like this picture.



Anyway....moving on! Bev and I hung out with some friends that not only went to high school with us, but also were in our ward. We had good times....(some that will make the flashback friday cut and some that will not..lol). We had a pretty close knit mutual group. We were all especially close with our Young Women leaders. Our Young Womens President just happened to have 2 teenage sons who weren't really active, didn't go to school and were slightly on the verge of being menaces to society. We thought they were HOT! I think somewhere in our little juvenile minds, we believed that we could reactivate them, give them makeovers and turn them into movie stars. One of them had hair down past his shoulders, but it was nothing we couldn't change.

We wanted to get to know them better, but we didn't really know how to go about it. We told their mom to invite them to some activities, but we didn't want her to know about our makeover plans for them either, so we had to be pretty discreet. The boys in our ward were not helping the situation at all. They pretty much knew what we were up to and had already began to make fun of us.

One night as my sister, two of our friends and I were cruising around in the van, we conveniently drove by their house. The two boys were out on their front lawn sitting on their trampoline with about 5 of their friends that we only knew to see from our school. We played it cool, but knew this was our time to shine. We drove by ever so nonchalantly and began to devise our plan. We had nothing! There was no way we were parking and getting out to talk to them so we decided to just drive by one more time.

As we approached the front of the house, someone rolled down the windows in the van and screamed "YOU'RE SO HOT!!!!!!", as I lay on the horn! No sooner had the word hot been yelled out, than we heard sirens and saw the van get lit up by the cop car that was right behind us.....in front of our future husbands house.

I could have died right then and there. I mean, seriously what are the odds? We were pulled over basically in the boys' yard and they were just staring at us from the trampoline as if we were psycho stalkers or something, the nerve....... The cop came to my window, asked me for all my papers. He ran my license and registration and then came back and and then said something about honking being illegal (which I highly doubt) and said that he would let us go on a warning. We hid from those boys for a couple of weeks due to pure embarrassment, but as you can imagine that only lasted until we devised our next plan of attack.

Flashback Friday

One year ago today, my life changed and I knew from that moment on, it would never be the same. I was 37 weeks pregnant to the day and was being induced at 6:30am in the morning. I was so unsure of what was going on. I felt like I wasn't ready to have the baby and that it was too soon, but I had a Dr. that was pushing me, telling me that I was on the brink of toxemia, but was also leaving for Peru the next morning. Man, have I learned a few things!!! ANYWHO, my mam had come into town to be there. Tyler, my mam and I headed to the hospital at 6:30am and checked in. I was so nervous. They took my blood pressure and it was sky high with the nerves...It came down once I settled down. lol. I hadn't eaten anything because they told me not to and I was already STARVING. Tyler and my mam went and got breakfast. I was already dilated to a 3 the previous week and just assumed that things would get moving pretty quick. They started me on pitocin and magnesium (because my lovely Dr. insisted). I was sweating, then freezing, then sweating. My husband was putting wash cloths in my palms because my hands were on fire. About 4 hours into it, I just felt sick. I sat up in the bed and proceeded to vomit, except there was nothing in me so I was just basically wretching (WORST.FEELING.EVER), my blood pressure dipped way low and so they had to give me meds for that and for the nausea, but my lovely Dr. would not turn off the magnesium. The vomiting happened a few more times and at this point, I was out of it. My Dr. had described being on magnesium as feeling like a limp wash rag...Um, yeah. They gave me a drug called phenergan at which point I began to hallucinate. My mam said I was saying things like, why am I here?, I don't even know who I am?, etc....I don't remember anything. I had gotten an epidural pretty early. I'm still surprised my Dr. was down with that because he was so dumb about everything else. He let me get an epidural at a 3. As time went on, I began feeling hard contractions and so my Dr. called the anesthesiologist to come top me up. Now, I don't know the lingo...but someone misinformed someone because the anesthesiologist gave me a whole new dose and my Dr. and him were having some strained discussions to the side of my bed. At this point, with the magnesium, epidurals and all the other drugs, I was basically passing out. Tyler kept trying to talk to me, but all I wanted to do was sleep. I started vomiting once more, and the Dr. came in and said, "ok, let's have a baby." Might I add, that him and my husband were talking about the BYU game that was on. I WAS SO MAD!!!!! It was around 7pm, Tyler had to slap me a few times to wake me up to push, but after about 20 mins, Noah Vann Matlock was born. Weighing 7 lbs 2 oz and 21 inches long. The nurses noticed that Noah was breathing kinda funny, so they called another Dr. in who suggested we transport him to Twin to St. Lukes. I was so mad at my Dr. because he was saying things like, "I thought his lungs would be ready"...Yeah, ANYWAY...Noah was transported to St. Lukes that night. Tyler went with him and my mam stayed with me. They wheeled him in to me in his little transport crib before they left and he was so dang cute. Little beenie, all wrapped up! It was honestly the saddest moment of my life. I was so worried and scared. I didn't sleep at all that night and I never ate because I wasn't hungry anymore! The next morning, my Dr. was trying to tell me that I had to stay longer because I had been on magnesium and couldn't leave for 24 hours. I seriously told him that I'd be leaving with his approval or without. He said he'd release me by 10am. My mam and I took off to Twin. As it turned out, Noah's lungs were fully developed but the fluid around them was not. By the time we got there, all was well. They had replaced the missing surfactant (fluid) and Noah was just being monitored really. He also had a bad case of jaundice, which is pretty common, but because we were there, they had him under the lamps. He was 5 days in the hospital. We stayed in twin and went over every 3 hours to feed and change him, even in the middle of the night! Even at days old, Noah was a little fireball. Everytime they put a tube in him, he'd pull it out!!! Every single person that passed him in the NICU commented on how beautiful he was. The funny thing was that most of the other babies were preemies, so Noah looked HUGE compared to them! We took him home on Tues night and our adventure began. We love Noah so much and cannot imagine our lives without him!!! Happy Birthday Mr. Skinny Bums!!!!

(when he arrived in Twin Falls, ID)

(This was in the nicu, I chopped off his head because he had an IV in it.)


(Now you know why we call him Mr. Skinny Bums....:))

St. Paddy's Day!!!!

Wishing everyone a Happy St. Patrick's Day! Wish I was home in the motherland to celebrate it in style!!!!!! Instead, I will party it up with my boys as we get snockered off of green Kool Aid. Good Times!!!

Getting Creative

I decided to take the plunge and take part in bountiful baskets. I picked up my box of produce on Saturday! I was excited, but kinda scared because this meant that I was going to have to get creative, especially since this basket contained asparagus, and multi colored cauliflower.....Eeek...

I am proud to say that I have been more than pleased. I made cauliflower cheese to go along with our honey bbq chicken one night and then made grilled fresh green beans last night. Let me tell you that those bad boys were SO GOOD! I couldn't stop eating them even before I put them on the plates. SO GOOD!!!! Tonight I am going to make roasted asparagus. I got the recipe here. (p.s.That blog is awesome, you should follow it :))

This isn't actually my basket, I took this pic from the same website where I got my recipes for the asparagus and green beans. I also got blueberries instead of blackberries and only 2 roma tomatoes :(

One more thing, for all my Vegas and Alamo peeps, Bountiful Baskets is in your area!!! You should totally check it out!!!! Here's the link. Enjoy!!!!

Flashback Friday

I've decided to do a little blurb called Flashback Friday's on my blog. Some of the blogs I follow do this and I think it's really cool and interesting.....sometimes embarrassing and mostly hilarious. I will try to do one every Friday!!!

The year was 1997. I was a freshman @ Pahranagat Valley High School in Alamo, NV. My family had just moved into our new house on the outskirts of town and so our Saturdays consisted of waking up @ the crack of dawn and working like slaves weeding, making a circular driveway and planting trees. It was (and still is) HOT AS HELL in those parts and so we would usually get up at about 6am and work until it became too hot at about 10am. My mam is a hardworking woman and so when it was Saturday morning, we knew she meant business. Our little brother usually did whatever was necessary to get out of doing anything and always seemed to have a Mountain Dew in his hand while the rest of us were sweating bullets ;) I remember he once sat in the back of the truck after we had loaded a bunch of boulders for the driveway. When we got back to the house to unload the boulders, we noticed that Scott was no longer in the back of the truck....We felt real bad when we discovered he had fallen out of the truck and was now walking down the road to the house, all mad, but still clutching his Mtn. Dew. haha.

On one of these hot days, my sister Mandy and I were asked to go haul a truck load of trash to the dump. We loaded up the truck and headed to the dump. My sister was a senior and drove the big old truck to the dump. We got there, unloaded and headed back. Now, I don't know exactly how fast we were going but as we came to the T in the road (which was conveniently placed infront of the cemetary, which was right next to our house), Mandy went to hit the brakes in order to turn right....except there were suddenly no brakes!!!!! I think we screamed and probably said some other stuff too (lol) and flew right through the cemetery fence and finally came to a stop about 2 inches from someones grandmas headstone. I think I remember nervously laughing. You know the kind where you know you're DEAD, but still can't believe that this just happened.... We went inside and called my mam to break the bad news. We were always getting ourselves into situations like this, so we were both scared to make the call. My mam was not happy! About 10 mins later, we were looking out the window and spotted Alamo's finest (the cops) at the top of the hill snapping pictures and measuring our tire tracks. Mandy and I then had to make statements, and had to convince the cop that we really weren't speeding (that much) and that Mandy was driving and not me since I was only 14. Everyone knew about it right away and probably said something like, "there goes those Devine kids again" but we were very grateful that we didn't get into too much trouble and only had to put up a new fence.

I'm glad we can look back on this and laugh now because at the time we thought our lives were over and that it was the end of the world!!!!

Back In Business

First of all, this is what I opened my front door to today....Just when you think spring is here!!!



I haven't blogged in awhile. There have been a few reasons. We have been busy, out of town and my laptop choked. I also didn't feel like I had any good news to share, so blogging wasn't at the top of my list. Our new laptop arrived today and let me tell you, it feels great to have that technology at my fingertips once again. I have been trying to do what I can on my phone, but it just wasn't cutting it. We had another laptop and gave it to my mam & stepdad because we didn't need it....I would love to say I was surprised when our laptop bit the dust after giving our "back up" one away, but I'm not too surprised at all. Two words: DEVINE CURSE. Amen.

My baby is turning 1 year in 11 days. How can this even be possible? It seems surreal that at this time, a year ago...I was going in for non stress tests twice a week with a doctor that I despised and never thought that I would actually ever meet my baby because it seemed like I had been pregnant for about 3 years. Haha. How my life has changed since then...Everything I do now revolves around Noah and I wouldn't have it any other way. But, enough of the sappy stuff...let me be honest: My husband says that Noah is experiencing The Terrible 11 months right now. Noah is clingy, stubborn, spoiled, and then some. He gets into EVERYTHING. He has pulled off the child proof latches that Tyler installed....yes, the ones that you screw in. He will slam his fingers in the cupboard, scream hysterically and then go back for some more.... He is almost walking. He'll stand up by himself and walk around the furniture and I know my life will be over as soon as he becomes really mobile. Even though he is a fireball and a lot of work, I love him!!! One of my favorite moments of this weekend was when he snuggled up to me and fell asleep in my arms. Doesn't happen anymore, so it was awesome!!! We are still trying to figure out birthday plans. I would love to take him to a zoo or something. Does a zoo operate in the snow? I dunno.

I am on book #2 for the book club I'm in. The first book we read was Jane Eyre. It was so boring. I thought I would die reading it. Granted it's pretty much a classic, but so so so sooooooooo BORING. This months book is The Glass Castle. I haven't started it yet because it just got here, but the story sounds interesting and I'm sure it will keep my attention. Excited!

I'm a TV junkie. Don't judge me. I usually have to catch up on my shows after Noah is down for the night. It's the beauty of DVR. I watched the bachelor this season. 2 things...1. Brad is not cute and 2. He has the most boring personality in the world. How many times per episode does he say..I see what you mean, I know what you mean or I get what you're saying....Zzzzzzzzz, We are all up on American Idol as usual. I hated Steven Tyler at the beginning, but I kinda like him now and I like J Lo and Randy too. I was pretty ok with the final 13 picks and have a few favorites of my own.

This guy is one of my favorites! I love his background story and BOY CAN SING. I also think it's hilarious that my sisters think he looks like Tyler....Um, no!



My mam was in town a few weeks ago and made me curtains. I helped a tiny bit, but she did most of the work and I love them. I've been trying to find curtains that are wide enough to fit my kitchen window. I should have known that my favorite store (IKEA) would have them and for CHEAP!!!! We ended up buying a set of grey curtains there and some cute printed fabric and my mam did the rest!!!!





I wanted to get my sister a baby carrier tent for baby Isla who is set to arrive in June. I received one when I was pregnant with Noah and it has been a dream. However, when I went to buy one online, it was $50....No thanks. So, my mam and I bought some fabric and some thread and made one for about $8. Of course I didn't take a picture of the final product, but here's one before we started sewing. It was sooooooooo easy and $42 cheaper. We also made it so it can double as a nursing cover too!



Here's some other random pics from my camera.





Hahaha, somebody partied a little too much....