Merry Christmas!

We hope you had a wonderful time celebrating the birth of our Savior!

Rebecca is going to...

The Texas Fort Worth mission, Spanish speaking! We are all very excited for her. She enters the MTC in April.

Dear Elder

I've been thinking a lot about the missionaries lately. My sister Rebecca is hopefully going to be getting her mission call this week, which I will post about after she has a chance to tell people herself first. :)

I thought I'd make a suggestion for a very easy Christmas gift that everyone can give- write to the missionaries! They can really use love and support, especially at this time of the year. Dearelder.com makes it REALLY easy to write to the missionaries, and it's free to write to most of them*. Just like sending an email. All you do is go to the website, select the mission, and enter your mailing address and the missionary's name. That's it! Then you can write your letter, and they print it off and mail it for you. It takes about 2 weeks to get to most missions. If you write to somebody in the MTC, it gets there the same day.

I really wish I had discovered how easy Dearelder is to use before my sister Sara went into the MTC. I would have written a lot more letters if I didn't have to find an envelope and a stamp. So now you know how easy it is too! If you need someone to write to, ideas about what to write, or anything else, please let me know.  And please write a  little note to a missionary- they'd love to hear from you!

*If your missionary happens to be serving in a mission that isn't free, Dearelder only charges you the cost of the stamp. They still print your letter and mail it for you, and it's still easier than finding a stamp and envelope yourself.

School

Yesterday, I gave my thesis proposal defense and took my oral comprehensive exam. It was a lot of work to prepare for, but I passed and it is done! Kind of. I still have my thesis to do, and my proposal made it very clear to me that it will be a lot of work. More than I had anticipated. But still, I can check off two more graduation requirements from the list. Yay!

A photo shoot

My fabulous sister-in-law Elyse took Lydia's pictures just before she turned 1 month, and they came out fantastic! You can find her on facebook as Elyse Alexandria Photography. Here are a few of my favorites.


This first one isn't Lydia, and it wasn't taken by Elyse. But here I am at 1 week old...

And here is Lydia in the same outfit on the same blanket. Except on her, it was more of a shirt than a dress.

Cloth Diapers

I wanted to try cloth diapers for Lydia after hearing several friends rave about how much they like them. The main attraction for me was the statement that cloth diapers don't leak as badly as disposables do. This was after a period of me getting pooped on by several different babies (and before Lydia was born). And then the whole save money, create less waste deal was an added plus. Well. Cloth diapers are fine, but after Lydia outgrows hers I'm not planning to buy more. As far as I'm concerned, their biggest advantage is that they are WAY cuter than disposables. They do seem to leak less, but not enough to really make a difference. My biggest complaint about them is how often Lydia has to be changed when she wears them. I frequently have to change her after 30 minutes if she's in cloth because she gets uncomfortable being wet & cries. I try to change her frequently no matter what kind of diaper she's in, but every 30 minutes is more often than I want to change diapers. I don't know what they do to disposables to help babies feel dry, but whatever it is it's magical. If anyone has a solution to this problem, I'd love to try it. Otherwise, we'll be sticking to disposables in future.

Back again...hopefully

Hi everyone. I have attempted to write several posts since my last one in April, but I always end up agonizing over what I write, saving it with the intent to "come back later" and finish it, and then never doing it. So my new goal is to take 5 minutes, post something, and then just leave it. Here is our daughter Lydia! She is so much fun, and she has grown so much since she was born. These pictures aren't very recent, but I hope you will enjoy them. And maybe if I keep doing my 5 minute posts, you will hear from me more often. :)

Anna holding Lydia

Bennett holding Lydia

Lydia in her blessing dress. She was really grouchy when we took these pictures, but this one came out cute I think.

Lydia after her first bath in the hospital.

Good Luck Eric!

Today Sara and I went out to lunch with my aunt, uncle, and cousins from Alaska, to say goodbye to my cousin Eric before he went into the MTC! He is going to be serving as a missionary in Armenia for the next 2 years. I am so excited for him, and I know he is going to do great.

Happy Birthday Rebecca!

Today we celebrated my sister Rebecca's birthday. She, her roommate Emily, my sister Sara, and our cousin Oliver all came up for dinner. It was a beautiful day, and we ate delicious barbecue chicken wrapped in bacon, potato salad, regular salad, and of course cake and ice cream. It was fun to see them, and fun to have a break in the middle of finals. I can't wait until Tuesday, when I will be done with classes forever!

Update

We are expecting a baby girl! And we are really excited.

Prior to the ultrasound, we were both pretty convinced we were having a boy. Peter is the oldest son of the oldest son going back lots of generations, and we figured we would probably just continue the tradition. When they told us our baby was a girl, we were both surprised. But we are happy, and excited, and looking forward to meeting her in a few months.

Ultrasounds are really amazing. I didn't know how much detail we would get to see. I think it's incredible that we could look at her brain, and see the chambers of her heart, and everything. I have seen pictures from other peoples' ultrasounds, but it isn't the same as being there- you get to see a lot more than just what they print.

I can sometimes feel her wiggle around and kick me, and that is fun. She seems to like to move around when I am trying to fall asleep, which isn't quite so fun. I'm sure she's just practicing keeping us awake all night for after she is born.

Overall, things are going well here. The semester ends in 2 weeks, and things are pretty crazy until then. But I'm sure it will go by quickly, and everything will get done that needs to, and then it will be summer!

News

We are very excited to announce that we are having a baby this summer!

Telling people that we are having a baby is a strange experience. I am really excited, and want to share with people, but there isn't really an easy way to bring it up in conversation. Or on a blog post. So this news is delayed for the blog because I didn't really know what to say. Sorry!

So- to answer some questions you all may have- we do not know if we are having a boy or a girl yet. We are planning to find out (and are excited to find out!) and we'll post it here when we know.

I have been fairly sick- not as sick as some people I know, and more sick than others. Not so sick that I needed medication. But I think...maybe...I'm done with being sick? I sure hope so. We'll see.

I haven't finished my degree yet, but I'm going to. I finish classes this semester, I have an internship spring term (which I am also very excited for), and then after the baby comes I will write my thesis. The timing actually works out very well, because my thesis shouldn't be too hard to do with a baby, but classes and an internship would be harder to do.

If you have any advice on anything baby-related, we'd love to hear it. Going into baby-land is overwhelming- there are so many things to do, and get, and SO much information available, and it's nice to hear opinions from people we know and trust. So send us your checklists, or the names of books you think we should read, or your favorite products, or anything else that you have found helpful. We'd love to see it!


Also- so you're aware, I'm not going to post my due date, or our baby's birth date, or that sort of personal information on the internet. I'm happy to tell you, I just don't want just anybody to be able to look it up. :) So if you want to know, send me an email or something.

Lost & Found

Last night, a stray dachshund followed me home from taking Callie out for her evening walk. They were playing together, so Peter took her back to the corner where she first met up with us alone to see if she would wander home. She followed him home too. Since she didn't have a collar, and she and Callie had been getting along, and when Peter took her out she spent lots of time walking in the middle of the road (bad idea for a small black dog at night) we decided to keep her for the night and take her to the vet in the morning to see if she had a microchip.

Callie DID NOT like her once she came into the house. We knew Callie was territorial about food, and we learned that she is also territorial about her house and her people. She spent lots of time growling at the poor little dachshund (actually, the dachshund was bigger than Callie and weighed a lot more) and holding her head down to the ground so she would know that Callie is the alpha dog at our house. Whenever Callie would push her head down, the dachshund would just wag her tail and lick Callie's face. It was sad to watch, so we tried separating them for the night. The dachshund cried and cried until we put her back with Callie. We thought it was weird that she wanted to be with Callie when Callie wasn't being nice to her, but we wanted to sleep so we just left them together. It wasn't the most restful night, because several times in the night Callie felt the need to growl and put the dachshund back in her place.

In the morning, they were both wagging their tails and playing nicely and you would never know that they hadn't been getting along the night before. Peter took the dachshund to the vet, and fortunately she had a microchip so they were able to get her back to her family.

I'm glad we were able to help the stray dog, but it turned out to be a lot more challenging than we thought it would be when we decided to bring her home. It has been nice to have a quiet house this evening.

MR2 x2

Those of you who have been reading this blog since the beginning may remember this post about us getting a black 86 MR2. What I did not include in that post was that the car didn't run when we bought it. We thought it would be a "quick fix" that Peter could do himself that would be fun for him to do. Well, after four years, a new engine, and more money and headache than I want to think about, the car finally runs. It isn't in perfect shape, but it runs. I hope we have learned our lesson and will not buy another project car ever again. Even still, I feel like this story has a happy ending because the car RUNS, and for a long time, I thought it never would.