Miracle

Hello world. It's been a while. I have started to write posts a few times, and then I always think of something more important I should be doing during nap time. :) And right now, I also have a very long list of things to do, but I wanted to share this story.

A while ago, the lights in our bathroom stopped working. We flipped the breaker several times, but nothing would get them back on. Peter figured that there was a short in the wire, and where it was, and cut the wall open to fix it.

Turns out that our builders nailed through the wire when they were building the house 10+ years ago, and there was a very small fire in our wall when the metal recently all touched in a way it shouldn't have.  We were annoyed that our lights went out, but really, we should have been grateful that our house didn't burn down. And we are!  Miracles are sometimes disguised as inconveniences, but if you look closely, you might see how many more blessings you have than you thought.  God is always watching over us.

Lately

Sometimes, I wish I had a smart phone. My phone does take pictures, but it isn't very easy to share them. And I never think to go and grab our camera.  So, no pictures today, sorry. Maybe someday I will remember to take them, or even a video.

Lydia rolls over now, and sits up by herself all the time. She doesn't roll often, but she can. She also can eat solids, but has been in a phase of not wanting to eat anything, unless she puts it in her mouth herself. And the spoon causes tears too often for me to want her to play with liquidy foods that way.  So we've been having lots of tiny pieces of banana (that mostly get squished around the high chair tray) and some rice cracker things.  If anybody has suggestions for other non-choking baby foods that they can feed themselves, I'd love to hear them. Our pediatrician suggested getting her a mesh bag so she can gnaw on bigger things without the choking risk, and we'll probably get one soon.

Being a mom is the best job in the world- I love it! I am tired a lot, but it is so fun to spend time with Lydia and watch her learn and grow.

Adventures with Stinky Cheese

Around new years, we acquired a cheese.  We thought it was brie, which we both like. It has been living in our fridge and we sort of forgot about it, but last night I thought I'd bake it with some berries and we would eat it.  I opened the package, and thought, wow this doesn't smell like any brie I know. But it had been a while, so I thought maybe I just didn't know what brie smelled like. I decided to cut off the rind in case that would make it smell not quite so strong. It didn't. I had already made the berry sauce, so I decided to bake it in case that would make it seem more appetizing. After I put it in the oven, I went upstairs to take care of Lydia.  After a while, I noticed a smell. The cheese, which had a repulsive odor before, smelled 50 times worse and had permeated the entire house. I honestly thought that maybe if a skunk had gotten into the house, it wouldn't smell quite so bad as that cheese. Peter was brave enough to try one bite, and then we threw it away, and baked a chocolate cake to try to replace the odor with something more appetizing.

Turns out that we did not have a brie, but a camembert.  As you can see from the picture, they look about the same. If you ever have the misfortune to have a camembert in your house, I suggest that you throw it away. Whatever you do, DON'T bake it. Unless you happen to love stinky cheese. :)

February Update

Where has the time gone? I didn't realize it had been so long since my last post.  Here's what's new with us-

We went to Oregon to be with my family before my sister leaves on her mission. It was a wonderful trip, and Lydia was awesome on the airplane.  I flew out with Peter and Sara, and thought I was going to fly home by myself. However, my former roommate's mom ended up being on my same flight, and she was a huge help. It was so nice to have somebody else to help with Lydia and all her belongings- traveling with a baby requires a lot of stuff!  Small miracles. :)

Lydia got sick for the first time. That was awful. She had a really bad cold, and we had to take her to the doctor to have her nose suctioned out with this little machine.  After we did that she could breathe and got better within a couple days. It was a pretty miserable week.

Lydia has been moved into her own room, and she is sleeping wonderfully. The first night was rough, but she has been getting used to it and hardly cries when we put her to sleep- sometimes not at all.

I have been working, slowly but surely, on my thesis. I neglected it over the Christmas break, but I am back on track.

Lydia & Lorenzo

A few weeks ago, Lydia and I were over at a friend's house. She has a 1-year-old who is very sweet, and he and Lydia get along as well as can be expected considering Lydia can't really do anything but smile and coo to interact with him.  He wanted to share his stuffed llama Lorenzo with her, and she LOVED him! And I love this picture. 

It made my day when I discovered it in my email inbox this morning. I hope it brightens your day too!

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.

Jamaica Video

This is the video report for Peter's recent Jamaica project. It talks about their work there, and shows Peter in action a few times.

October

This past month I have been way more flaky than usual. So I wanted to start off this post with an apology to the world in general for all the things I've been supposed to do that haven't gotten done. Hopefully this next month things will go better.

In the beginning of the month, my mom's mom passed away. I was able to go home for the funeral, which was really nice. My sisters, dad, and I played a few songs at the funeral and the luncheon afterwards. I saw lots of family. I was able to see my best friend's new baby in the hospital right before I left to come home. It was as nice of a trip as a funeral trip could be. Unfortunately, it also left me somewhat behind in school.

Peter also went to Jamaica for 2 weeks this month. He just got back last night, which was a miracle because he flew through JFK. They closed the airport after because of a snowstorm, but thankfully he was able to get out before they closed. We all missed him a lot, but he had a good time. I'm not sure if he took pictures or not, but if he did I'm sure he'll post some of them so we all can be jealous. :)

My sister came home from her mission in Hong Kong last week. It has been really nice to be able to talk to her whenever I want to. I'm excited to see her next month when my family comes out for Thanksgiving.

Friday night was our ward trunk or treat, and Michael and I went as lumberjacks. A little girl who was sitting at our table was very concerned that we "didn't have costumes" because I guess to her lumberjack clothes look just like regular ones. I told her that we were supposed to be lumberjacks, and she said, "oh, apple jacks! I love that cereal. We buy it sometimes." It was super cute.

Happy Halloween to everyone tomorrow!