Christmas Pictures

All right, so please indulge me for a bit here. Since none of my own family was with me for Christmas, I'm going to post a ton of pictures of the event. Sorry if that's terribly boring for any of the rest of you.

Having said that, we had a great Christmas. It took Bentley two days to open all his presents, and we finally finished opening Kendra's presents for her on the 27th (they were becoming too big a temptation for Bentley!). Everyone was very generous and kind to us (as you'll be able to see!). Craig's parents spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with us and we had a super-fun time. I especially enjoyed kicking back and letting Craig and his mom bake all the pies AND make Christmas dinner. They are too kind to me! One of these days I'm going to need to buckle down and actually learn how
to bake... But not this year!


Kendra looks longingly at the presents.


Looks like Santa came in a big way!


We're happy because the children are nestled all snug in their beds


Kendra thinks that she is a present. (Note that she can still drool more than any other baby...!)


Bentley plays with Kendra's toys while she plays with Bentley's toys. And everyone's happy!


Bentley practices his hammering skills. He wants to help Daddy around the house...




Kendra's presents are routinely bigger than she is!






Ironically, Kendra is practicing standing up on the box of the toy that's supposed to help her stand up...


Kendra looks in awe at her new baby doll.


We proudly sport our new, matching Bay Hay & Feed t-shirts. I miss Bainbridge!

Standards

My Mom is a pro at loading the dishwasher. If there were an Olympic event for cramming every single possible dirty dish into a dishwasher, my Mom would win, no contest. They wouldn't even need judges or scores or anything, she'd just win. When we were kids and we landed “dishes” on the chore chart, we were never allowed to start the dishwasher until Mom had had a chance to inspect and add whatever dishes we’d either missed or didn’t think there was room for. Even this last time my parents visited me here, I was still impressed with how much my Mom managed to put into my tiny dishwasher (I would have just done two loads—- what a waste!).

I don't think I have any hope of ever rising to my mother's level in this department. However, I have discovered my own little quirk when it comes to doing dishes. I HAVE to have the spoons separated. I HATE it when they’re stuck together, because then I just know that they didn’t get clean and I need to wash them all over again. I have this elaborate method of putting silverware into the little silverware pockets so that the spoons are never allowed to find each other and, well, spoon. We all have to have our own standards for these things.

Pictures

I have a hard time getting pictures of Bentley these days. Getting him just to hold still is tricky, and then convincing him to remove his binky and smile is bordering on the impossible. So I was pleased with how well these two pictures turned out. (No, I don't let him watch Cars all day long-- really!) And since I'm posting pictures, I may put up one of Kendra, too. Enjoy!

Writer's Block?!?!?!

So I've been trying to write my Christmas newsletter, and I have to admit, it's not going well. I feel like it's a huge (read: REALLY LONG) list of everything we've done over the last two years (since I never got around to sending one out in 2007) and there's nothing very personal about it and it's boring. So I think I have writer's block over it or something. But every time I think of something personal or funny or whatever that might make the newsletter worth reading, I realize that I put that on the blog. So if I put it in the newsletter, too, it will just be a repeat and THAT would be totally lame. So now I'm leaning more towards just sending out a family photo and calling it good. I don't know. We still haven't managed to take a family picture, either, but at least the black eyes have vanished, so we'll look a bit healthier when we do finally get around to it!

The funny thing is that I love writing this stuff usually! So I'm not sure why it feels so difficult this time around... Anyway, I'll get something done eventually. I promise!

Patriotism (or something)

So I’ve noticed a trend in the various garbage pickup services around here. Their names are American Disposal, Patriot, and USA. What’s up with the garbage market having a monopoly on patriotism??? I don’t see anyone else trying this tactic—-realtors, clothing manufacturers, shoe stores, coffee houses… Nope, only the garbage men are proud to be Americans. What’s up with that?

Black-Eyed Smiths

We are looking very beat up these days. On Thanksgiving, Bentley managed to run into the corner of the table and now he has a big bruise just below his eye. Then on Friday, Craig was breaking sticks for our fire (I LOVE OUR FIREPLACE), and one of them snapped up and scratched him right under his eye. And then this afternoon I was supposed to be watching Kendra on the bed but she managed to fall off it anyway (I did dive across the bed trying to catch her, but to no avail) and somehow she scraped herself right under her eye! I considered asking Craig to punch me so I’d fit in, but I figure I’m klutzy enough that I probably don’t need the help. As if this all weren’t pathetic enough, I was hoping to take a family picture this week to send out for our Christmas cards! I guess we’ll have to wait a bit on that one, or else I’m sure we’ll have some social worker knocking on our door… (If they haven’t already spotted my blog. Maybe they’re on their way now!)

Kendra the Fashion Plate

One of the really fun things about having kids is getting to put them in really cute clothes. I have to especially enjoy it now while I can pretty much dress them in whatever I want and they don’t usually have opinions about it. (Or if they do, tough luck because I’m bigger and stronger!) Anyway, I’ve got a small photo collection of some of my favorite outfits on Kendra, so I’ll post a few.





It was really hard to get her to leave her hat on long enough to get a good picture.



And, no, I didn’t manage to put on make-up for this picture. Oops! But you can see my new haircut (back when it was new), so that makes up for the lack of mascara, right?

And last but not least, I have to post this picture because it is SO AWFUL. Craig and I are both chronic blinkers when it comes to having our picture taken, so our poor kids never had a chance. Add to that Bentley having a snotty nose, and, well, yeah. It’s horrible. But really funny, too, if you ask me!

My Husband, the Closet Workaholic

Craig probably spent about thirty hours last week working on the set for our Stake’s production of Savior of the World. Yes, THIRTY HOURS. And that was in addition to his full-time job! So I didn’t see much of my husband all week. And I have to admit that that kind of sucked (especially when I realized that my back was getting sore because I had to lift both our children all day long and never got any breaks!).

But the flip-side to all this manifested itself Saturday when the rest of the cast got to see the set for the first time. I have to admit, it was pretty fun hearing how impressed everyone was and knowing that it was all my husband’s doing. Betsy Heyward commented, “Craig is incredible.” I just smiled and told her that I’d always thought so. My friend Elizabeth once mentioned that when you like a guy, just about anything he can do really well becomes terribly sexy. Even construction.

Rather than try to describe the set, I’ll just put up a couple pictures; it’s not done yet, but in the last picture you can see four of the five arches, so you get a pretty good idea of what it looks like. Bear in mind that Craig designed all this, gathered all the materials, bought what wasn’t donated, organized all the labor, and just pretty much worked his tail off. Isn’t he great?

Cricket Baseball

I know what you’re thinking. “Cricket basically IS baseball, so that makes for a pretty redundant title for your post!” Would that that was what I was referring to. No, the cricket I’m talking about is those ugly insects that are basically cockroaches that hop and also seem to really like my basement. If you’re a regular reader, you know that I was rejoicing in the cold weather because it meant the end of the nasty little things, but I guess one decided to try hibernating indoors this winter. I discovered it relaxing on the love sac (ON MY LOVE SAC!!!) right in front of the heating vent, probably considering itself to be in a little grasshopper paradise. (Yes, I realize there is a difference between crickets and grasshoppers, but I don’t know what it is, and I don’t care, either. So there.)

I grabbed the fly swatter and began poking at the thing trying to get it off the love sac. For obvious reasons, I didn’t want squished cricket all over it. The stupid thing was trying to hop but couldn’t manage to get the right footing for it or something, so it was awkwardly scrambling around while I tried to give it a little direction. Finally it managed a good jump right as I swung with the fly swatter and—thwack!—you have the reason for this post’s title! The smacking sound it made as it hit the opposite wall pleased me no end. Unfortunately, the opposite wall is dark wood paneling (actually pretty much the whole room is, except for the brick fireplace; some day we’ll paint it), so after it landed over there, it was really hard to find. After glaring into the dark corners (why can’t these things ever happen during the day, or else when Craig’s home to take care of them???), I finally located the pest. Then I beat the crap out of him with the fly swatter. Not one to take any chances, I then proceeded to vacuum him up. For the record, I’m not completely insane; I’ve seen bugs that I was quite certain were dead wait a few minutes and then crawl hastily away. I’m not sure if they just recovered very quickly or were actually that crafty, but either way it’s creepy. Also, I’d been meaning to vacuum that room all week anyway, so this was as good a reason as any to finally do it.

Anyway, it’s a really long story with not much point to it, but the point I hope you do take away from all this is: crickets, beware. And Seattle Mariners, if you need someone, I’ve got a killer swing and I’m available.

Bentley-isms

I do love to hear how things sound when Bentley tries to say them. Learning toddler-ese is definitely its own skill and mothers are the closest thing to fluent that there is (although only with her own kids, of course).

So today, I was singing the Pirate theme song—“Yo ho yo ho, a pirate’s life for me!”—and Bentley joined in enthusiastically with “Ho yay ho yay!” Pretty close, I guess.

And then the other day, Bentley wanted me to sing “Popcorn Popping on the Apricot Tree”—but what he actually said was, “Pock porn!” What are they teaching the kids in nursery these days? A few other favorites: “pookie” means “poopy” and instead of peek-a-boo, it’s now “peeky-boo!”

Relaxin

So I’ve read it in books—when you nurse your baby, your body produces a hormone called relaxin. (It could be spelled “relaxen” or some other way; I’m not entirely sure…) You can probably guess what this hormone does. Naturally, I never really gave it much thought.

Until a few nights ago when I woke up at 3:00 in the morning because Bentley was crying “Honey!” from his room. “Honey” is his version of “hungry.” And while I have occasionally heard him say that when he’s first waking up from a nap, I have never heard him yell it in the middle of the night. I didn’t really know what else to do, so I got him up, strapped him in his highchair and fed the poor hungry kid some bread and butter. Bentley thought all this was great fun, especially when cars drove by and their headlights shone into the kitchen window (still no blinds or curtains—oops). It was all I could do to encourage him to hurry up and EAT so I could go back to bed. Finally he was done, I put him back to bed and then dragged myself to bed. And then I proceeded to lie there wide awake. Finally, a half hour later, Kendra woke up, too, so I went ahead and fed her and then—poof!—I went right to sleep! At least, until Craig’s alarm went off less than an hour and he proceeded to want to discuss what he should wear that day and ask if he could turn on the lights to find it; why does my entire family conspire against me?

But I digress.

The point in all this, is that I had never really thought much about this amazing little relaxin hormone, but apparently I need to start giving it some more credit, because in all my time of middle-of-the-night feedings, I have never once had trouble falling asleep again. Until I was feeding a toddler and therefore I didn’t get my little kick of hormonal relaxers. Clearly I need to start appreciating this more! Hurray for hormones! At least, hurray for relaxin!

Pictures

So, maybe it's a week late, but I decided to have a little photo shoot in the backyard anyway. Enjoy the costumes-- I had to bribe my son with candy to get him to wear his again!

Crawling

Kendra has been working on crawling. If she’s properly motivated (i.e. if Mom’s cell phone or something else that she is NEVER supposed to touch is just out of reach), then she can scoot forward in a great little army crawl. Occasionally she’ll even manage to get her knees underneath her for a bit, but it’s nothing terribly impressive, to tell you the truth. Bentley didn’t really crawl until he was about nine months old, so I wasn’t too worried about how slow Kendra’s been. Until yesterday, when I watched a couple of my friends’ babies and saw how good they both were at crawling (one is two months older than Kendra, the other is one month younger, and the older one has been crawling for forever now). So I decided I should be better about putting her on the floor so she can improve her crawling.

And then, tonight, as I tried to do this, I realized why Kendra is so bad at crawling still. His name is Bentley. During the hour that she was on the floor, I sat with my arms flung out around her so that Bentley could not: a) take away whatever toy she was scooting towards; b) step on her; c) lay down on her (he thinks he’s sharing tummy time with her); d) head-butt her (that’s his version of a hug, so he meant well, but try explaining that to Kendra!). I also tried distracting Bentley by reading to him and giving him other toys, and finally wound up putting him in time out (lots of crying and pleas of “Saw-ee Mommy!” during those two minutes!). But the over all lesson that I got from this little venture is that Kendra may not be so hot at crawling, but by golly I keep her from being traumatized by her brother all day long. And that will just have to be good enough for now!

Food (or lack thereof)

Is it really horrible if I’m thinking about having cereal for dinner even though that’s what I ate for lunch? What if I had cinnamon rolls and hot chocolate for breakfast—does that make it better or worse?

Don’t worry, tomorrow I’ll cook actual food. Really!

Halloween

So it turns out that teaching your 2-year-old to say “Trick or treat” is really fun. But it also makes for some confusing lessons for the poor kid. I first tackled this project right after Bentley woke up from his nap, which was a bad idea because he was still a bit tired and grumpy. I asked him to say it and he began kicking and screaming, “NO TIG OH TWEET!” I took that as a good sign that he could in fact say the words, even if he didn’t want to. After that, all I had to do was explain the candy aspect of this holiday to him and then he was game.

A little later in the day, I decided it was time to review the principles of Halloween. Our conversation went like this:

Me: Okay, Bentley, now when we knock on the door, what do we say?
Bentley: Aaaaahhh… Candy!
Me: Well, no, they’re going to give you candy, but what do you say so they’ll give you candy?
Bentley (very confident this time): PLEASE!
Me: Oh, well, no, that’s normally what we say, and that’s a good answer, but this time we’re going to say “Trick or treat.” Can you say, “Trick or treat”?
Bentley: TIG OH TWEET!

The good news is that he was excited enough about the idea of getting candy that I was able to convince him to wear the hood of his cow costume and ALSO to leave his teddy and binky back at home. Candy is a great motivator, apparently. The bad news is that the camera battery was dead, so I never bothered to take any pictures. Sorry to all Grandmas…

We also forgot to ever buy one of those little pumpkin buckets, so I improvised by drawing two jack-o-lantern faces on a small paint bucket we had lying around (one face on either side). They turned out pretty good, so I was sort of proud of that. I guess that also made up for the fact that we never carved a pumpkin this year, too. That was on the ironic side—last year, we bought a pumpkin but couldn’t find our carving kit. I think we spent hours digging through closets looking for that thing, but it never turned up until a few months later when I pulled out a bin filled with winter clothes and there it was, nestled among the scarves and gloves. So this year, with the move and the unpacking, I found the carving kit just a few weeks ago, and I was good and carefully set it aside so we’d be sure to have it this time. So naturally, when we went grocery shopping, the store had no pumpkins! (This may be a good time to mention that I shop at the most ghetto grocery store EVER.) I meant to run out to another store some time, but it just never happened. So no pumpkin this year. But I have a great carving kit if you want to borrow it. I know exactly where it is. Tig oh tweet!

Absentee Blogger

So the weird thing that I’ve noticed since I started this blog and again since I’ve lost my internet connection and hardly ever actually write anything any more is how blogging changed the way I think. While I had internet, I was much more likely to view my life half-looking for things that might be interesting to write about. It’s kind of like a part of my brain was always scanning for interesting/entertaining thoughts to be shared. Now that I’m able to post so infrequently, that little scanner seems to have shut down. Does that mean that more of my brain is free to focus on other, more important things? I sort of doubt it, but that would be pretty cool, huh?

Anyway, I think I’ll try to start typing out posts on my computer which can all then be posted at the same time when I make it to a wi-fi spot. We’ll see how this goes or if it just ends up annoying me.

Tagged.

I have to admit that I never thought I’d be tagged. I have a hard time picturing people who even read this, to tell you the truth. So when I saw that my cousin Anne had tagged me, it made me laugh. And I can’t really ignore something that makes me laugh, so here I go with my own response to it all…

4 Random Things I Like About Craig
1. His shoulders. They’re just big and strong and make me feel safe.
2. Talking with him—we never seem to run out of things to say and he can always make me laugh
3. Swing dancing in the kitchen. We’re lousy at it, but it’s always fun.
4. His willingness to always pitch right in and do stuff (I usually have to whine a bit first); he’s just a really good example to me

4 Jobs I’ve Had
1. Front desk receptionist at Airborne Express, one of my favorite jobs ever (easy, but fun, great people to work with, and pretty interesting, too)
2. Teaching English 115 at BYU
3. T.A. for the Humanities department at BYU
4. Teaching humanities for NVCC this last summer

4 Movies I’ve watched More Than Once
1. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
2. Moulin Rouge
3. Strictly Ballroom
4. About a Boy

4 TV Shows I Watch
1. Buffy the Vampire Slayer
2. Arrested Development
3. ER
4. Smallville

4 Favorite Foods
1. Chocolate
2. Brownies
3. Any pasta in a heavy cream sauce
4. Pizza

4 Places I’d Like to Visit
1. Anywhere in Africa
2. Jerusalem (so jealous of you, Rachael!!!)
3. Egypt (still jealous of Rachael)
4. Colmar, France (where the Isenheim Altarpiece lives)

4 Things I’m Looking Forward to in the Coming Year
1. Our first Christmas in our new home (and not traveling over the holidays for the first time)
2. Craig finishing building the set for the Stake musical so I can have him back again
3. Kendra’s first birthday
4. Summer vacation!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

4 People I Tag
1. Laresa
2. Carla
3. Liza
4. Anyone else who wants to bother (which I am totally stealing from Natalie)

Moved In

I’m gonna go ahead and claim that we’re unpacked.

Technically, there are two or three boxes full of old notebooks still lingering downstairs in the throwaway room that we have jokingly named The Library; the only other things in that room are two stuffed-full bookcases, a bunch of empty suitcases, and my vacuum. But those boxes can probably stay packed up for the next ten years without us missing them, so as far as I’m concerned, we are officially done unpacking. And not a moment too soon, either, since my parents arrive on Friday! I wish we would have time to paint our living room before they come, since it is still an abysmal pepto-bismol pink (including the ceiling—gross!), but I can’t see how we’ll possibly have time to do that. If it was just a matter of painting we might be able to pull it off, but the remains of the crown molding around the ceiling still need to be chipped off, parts of the pink flowered wallpaper are still clinging desperately to the wall, and then it all needs to be patched up and spackled and whatnot before we can finally start in with the actual paint. So, yeah, more work than what I have time for right now! But maybe before Thanksgiving we’ll manage to tackle that one.

The good news is that both the furnace and the oven are now working, and we didn’t need to replace either one of them! The furnace was probably the most obnoxious—a repairman told us it would be $800 to fix, but then suggested that Craig could save a lot of money by trying to tackle the job himself (which was very kind of him, and turned out to be good advice, too). Craig pulled off the main valve, which was supposed to need replacing, and then, on a whim, decided to open up the main line to see if the gas was even turned on. When no gas started pouring into our house, Craig called the gas company and managed to argue with someone until we were finally able to get them to come and turn the gas on again. (The people here before us hadn’t been paying their bills, which is why it had been turned off. The weird thing is that the gas company kept insisting it was still on, until Craig finally had this hard proof and threatened to sue them if our children got sick from sleeping in the cold!) After the gas was turned on, it turned out the furnace worked just fine. Wonder of wonders! And nice that it didn’t cost $800 after all… And it all got sorted out not a moment too soon, as the temperature dropped about twenty degrees the next night.

Now, if you know anything about me at all, you know that normally I hate it when the weather turns chilly. But even I can admit that having a working furnace made things seem a lot less horrible (at least, until we get our first bill and probably turn it back off again). And then the really good news was that it seemed to have killed off all the crickets—several of whom were sneaking into our house each night and totally creeping me out. So with the sudden chill, my normally gloomy outlook turned to cheers of, “Die, crickets, die!!!” And although normally I like the sound they make at night, when one managed to get in the hallway just outside my room and proceeded to chirp away loudly enough to wake both me and Craig at four on the morning… Yeah, that perky little chirping starts to get a bit annoying then. So I wasn’t sad to see them go. (I have to admit, hearing Craig kill the stupid thing in mid-chirp was oddly satisfying.)

So that’s it, I suppose, for now! We’re moved in, our house really feels like “home” and life is good. One of these days we’ll start tackling some more of the items on our list of projects, but for now, I’d like to just bask in the utter lack of boxes. Thank you, thank you.

...and the Bathroom.

I think the changes in the bathroom are even more significant. This room went from being horrible to being one of my favorite rooms in the house! ;) And can I just say how impressed I was with all the stuff Craig was able to do? Who just buys a new light fixture and installs it without hiring an electrician??? (Also tons of gratitude to my father-in-law who was a huge part of the entire endeavor-- I forgot to photograph it, but he actually managed to scrape all of those icky little flower decals off of the bathtub! I know I wouldn't have had that much patience-- he's amazing!)

By the way-- to all my friends, hopefully soon I can get into a groove of actually emailing people again. For now, please accept my apologies and know that if the library stayed open later, I would definitely be writing you!

The Kitchen

So, going with the idea that the pictures will say more than I can explain with words-- here's how our kitchen as morphed since we bought the house. It's not quite done yet-- I want to paint all the grooves in the cupboards blue, too, but that's low on the list of priorities... Still, hopefully you get the idea!