Merry Christmas!

Well, it is the end of our lovely Christmas Day. Ben, Emma, and I have been visiting the family in Utah for the past week and our stay has been very enjoyable. Tomorrow we will sadly be needing to return to Arizona, so I thought I would blog this evening before driving back in the morning. I thought the easiest thing to do was to post all of the Christmas pictures we took onto Slide. I also took a couple of short videos of some memorable moments. The first video was of us sledding at a nearby park. There has been a ton of snow up here! Awesome! I do love the snow, especially at Christmas time. Emma just loved sledding... I thought she would, but I was also worried it would be scary to her... however, she is our brave little Emma and she just giggled like crazy every time she went zipping down the hill. Emma took turns sledding with Daddy, Aunt Sarah, and Uncle Aaron. I didn't go, of course, because of my big belly. I obviously wouldn't want any harm to come to the little one. So, I just stayed up at the top of the hill and took pictures and cheered Emma on. It was wonderful.



This second video is from this morning as we opened gifts. Emma received the infamous TMX Elmo. She has been very spoiled this year for Christmas! Anyway, I took a short video of Emma experiencing her new toy for the first time. This Elmo really just wants to be left alone to do its thing once the button is pressed and Emma, of course, wanted to hold it while it tried to giggle and flail about. It was pretty funny. I think she'll soon get the hang of it and learn to appreciate its silly actions. It's an amusing toy.



Well, Merry Christmas to you all! I hope you had a memorable one. Even though I have always been poking fun at boring old January, I am actually looking forward to the New Year and setting some new goals. It's fun to have a new start and fresh look at things you'd like to change and improve in your life.... so, a Happy New Year to you all as well. :)

Toys, Santa, and The Office

We've had Christmas parties that we've been attending the past couple of nights. Last night we spent the evening at Ryan and Taya's enjoying an adult only Christmas gathering. Taya set up some young women babysitters to watch the kids at another house while we were all able to have fun without them. ;) It is a great relief to spend some time without Emma, although we sure do love having her around... it's just so nice to get a reprieve and be able to talk and eat without keeping a third eye and hand on the little one. Anyway, we ate good food and chatted and had a gift exchange. I ended up with a Nerf blaster gun of sorts, which I thought Emma would really like, but it turned out to be a gift that Ben has been particularly enjoying. He would have really liked it if I would have let him bring it along on our errands this morning... he could have shot at unsuspecting Costco shoppers. Ben's gift was a movie night package, including popcorn, popcorn bowl, hot chocolate, and a Blockbuster gift card.

So, tonight we went to our Ward Christmas Party. It was hectic, but fun. The cultural center was small with a lot of people crammed in there, but there was plenty of food, which is always wonderful! The dinner consisted of salad, funeral potatoes (LOTS of funeral potatoes!), corn, green beans, rolls, and ham. Plus, plenty of desserts. After eating, there were several singing and skit performances by various groups within the ward, and ending with Santa making an appearance. We really tried to get Emma to join in the fun by sitting on Santa's lap, but in the end she wouldn't ... even after waiting in a long line. However, she did get a candy cane, so all was well for her.

On another note, Ben and I recently enjoyed the Christmas episode of The Office. We both agreed that this may have been the funniest Office of them all. Here is a great clip, in honor of Christmas and The Office. Merry Christmas!

Random Thoughts

I was very productive today! It was great because I've been less than productive the past few days since Emma got sick. She was doing better today (but is still ill; we plan on taking her to the pediatrician tomorrow), so I was able to get a lot done. There's a lot to do after not being very with it keeping the house together for a few days. I had a lot of bill paying to do and account reconciling for one thing. Doing the finances while your husband is in medical school is always a frightening activity. It usually results in me realizing we have even less money than we thought (is that even possible!), but feeling better that I at least got it all straightened out. The good news, however, was that our electric bill was 40 dollars cheaper than it was last month because it's been so much cooler. For those in the rest of the country, 70 degrees would not be considered winter weather, but that's what its been the past few weeks. That means we rarely need to turn on the air conditioner or the heater. It's awesome! The electric bill is the most annoying of all the bills; it's like a fixed bill that's never fixed. In the summer we pay as much as 3 times the amount we pay in the winter, and there's no guessing how much we will need to pay for each month until the bill comes... I'm either pleasantly surprised or overwhelmingly bummed.

Anyway, on a much more amusing note and a random change in topic, I found this funny, yet strange video podcast that started today. It's Frosty the Snowman's 12 Days of Christmas podcast. In this episode, Frosty interviews Dasher the reindeer. I thought it was quite clever. I located it on revver.com.

Gastroenteritis and peeler accidents

Emma's had the stomach flu for the past couple of days. Poor thing. Ben says she has Gastroenteritis, more commonly called stomach flu. How fun it is to have a medical student for a husband (and it will be much more fun when he's no longer a student, eh?) Anyway, it is so sad to watch a little kid be sick... they are so particularly helpless and forlorn. Thankfully, she slept well last night and we didn't have any middle of the night incidents. She's been watching a lot of movies lately since she got sick. There's not much else she can do. To add to the fun, I had an incident with the peeler last night as I was peeling potatoes and peeled the tip of my middle finger. Poor me! It's a new peeler and particularly sharp, so it got me really good. My misfortune has been rather laughable, though, because I keep finding myself quite disabled at times when it comes to accomplishing certain tasks. I can't seem to keep a bandaid on it for long and every once and a while the cut breaks open and springs quite a leak. This morning, Ben had to tie my shoe for me because I was holding tissue on my mangled finger and needed assistance. And Ben had to pretty much finish making dinner last night after my peeler accident because my finger was stinging so badly. Anyway, Ben thinks we should go over to the DMV and get myself a handicap permit. Ha, ha Ben... that's so funny. ;) So, I guess it sounds like our family is quite pathetic right now with our maladies and bleeding appendages. But I'm sure these small misfortunes will quickly pass. :) At least, I plan on being more careful with my peeler next time.

3D!

Yesterday, Emma and I met up with Grandma and Grandpa Dangerfield and Aunt Emily, Uncle Ben, and Cousin Adam. Those would be how Emma would reference them, so you are not confused. :) Anyway, we all went to see The Polar Express on IMAX 3D! Wooeee! 3D! I think everyone in the theater wore the 3D glasses, except for Emma. She outright refused. She is so stubborn, but she absolutely loved the movie, despite the fact that it was all blurry for her. I wonder if she even realized it was all out of focus. I never know what she is thinking... she's so crazy. ;) Emma's favorite part was the train (after getting past the initial shock of how loud and big it was), the reindeer, and the snow. I really loved the movie as well. I've seen Polar Express at least a dozen times, but it was just great all big and popping out. It was very well done. The animation seemed particularly impressive. Oh, and sadly Ben couldn't join us in our frolicking because he was busy being a good little medical student and studying very hard for the good of the family. .... hmmm... That was well put, I say.

So, of course, we went to church this morning. We are on the 11:00 block. It turns out we will continue to go at the 11:00 time next year as well. We only have 2 wards in our building, at 9:00 and 11:00. Ben says that the Bishop wanted to keep the 11:00 time and I guess the other ward wanted to keep 9, and logistically it makes more sense with sharing classrooms or something, since our ward is bigger to be the last ward out. Consequently, we will not be getting the earlier block. I think we are one of the only families that seemed bummed out about this. We were really looking forward to switching to 9:00. We are up anyway with Emma's schedule and all and the 11:00 time is right during lunch and naps, so Sunday's are always a little off. Oh well... it is nice to have a few hours in the morning to take our time and get lessons finished and whatnot. In fact, we had plenty of time to have German Pancakes for breakfast this morning, so we did. The German Pancakes we make is Ben's mom's recipe, which is wonderful. I love family recipes. Anyway, we hadn't had german pancakes in months, so I figure, it's December, let's eat something full of calories! :) And to add to the calorie-fest, I also made pumpkin bread pudding this evening for our Advent dessert. It tastes like regular bread pudding and pumpkin pie all mixed together. It was pleasing to eat, I must say, especially with whipped cream on top. Yum! I love Christmas time and how we can get away with eating all sorts of delectable desserts and candies. This is another reason why January can be so drab, because we all feel guilty and feel as if we need to eat extra healthy to make up for our bad eating the month before. Oh bother! ;)

Scriptures and Presents

My last post was on Christmas traditions and it got me thinking... none of our holiday traditions are unique to us. So, I set out to find a new tradition that I didn't steal from Ben's or my family. My answer came in the December Ensign! Speaking of the Ensign (and because I like to get sidetracked), I have really been enjoying reading the Ensign and the Church News lately. I finished the Ensign for this month and now I've been reading the Church News for this week. It's nice to read wholesome, uplifting things, eh? Anyway, this Christmas tradition is to be done the 12 days before Christmas. You just need to get 12 small gifts or treats that can be shared among the family. I only spent 12 dollars (1 dollar per gift); it should be inexpensive I say. Wrap up each gift and on the outside include a gift tag with a scripture on each. Each scripture discusses a gift from our Heavenly Father, such as scriptures, prayer, the Creation, etc. So each night on the 12 days before Christmas, you look up and read the scripture, talk about the blessing/gift mentioned, and then open up the present and share what's inside. Since we will traveling to Utah on the 19th, we are doing the 12 Days Before Going Out of Town. This meant that we started last night. Emma liked it because it involved picking out a present from under the tree and getting to tear it up and eat the candy inside. Yum! This is good practice for Emma too, I figure. She needs to warm up those present unwrapping muscles. ;)

Ooo! Ben recently found me a fun blog addition. To the right is my very own radio station, which you can play while you read. You just have to select the station, "susan's music" and it will play through my playlist that we selected. It's pretty fun. To add Blog Tunes to your own blog, click here.

Christmas traditions

I love family traditions! Maybe this is why Christmas is my favorite holiday; there are so many fun traditions associated with it. Ben and I have already started a couple of our traditions to start out the holiday celebration. Both are related to counting down to Christmas and both are traditions that Ben's family has done for many moons. Anyway, we've incorporated them within our own little family and it's really fun. Emma is enjoying all the celebrations as well.

First, is our cute little advent calendar. I think every family does something of this nature to countdown the days of December until Christmas. Well, we love our fun calendar... Emily, my very talented sister-in-law, labored many many hours to make this for us as a previous Christmas gift. We are most grateful because we just love it. Ben and I have always fought over who gets to put up the next piece. ;) Now we have an Emma to share with too... oh bother. he, he. So, each day there is a decorated felt piece of something Christmas related that is to be pinned to the tree. How cute.

Another tradition is more obscurely known as "Preparing Your Heart for Christmas", but is most commonly called "Advent". Every Sunday between Thanksgiving and Christmas, in addition to Christmas Eve (which happens to fall on a Sunday as well this year) we have a simple celebration involving lighting a candle on the "advent wreath", reading some pre-assigned scriptures that focus on a different theme each Sunday, singing Christmas hymns and then eating yummy desserts. So, yesterday was the second Advent. We did this with Ben's family over at their house. My favorite part is the singing and the eating. ;)

When we got home from our Thanksgiving vacation, we decorated the apartment for Christmas. One reason why January can be so sad for me is because we have to put all these lovely decorations away. The apartment then looks so barren. So, in the meantime I will just enjoy the colors and the lights. Emma's figured out how to turn the Christmas tree lights on by herself. She likes to do this first thing when she wakes up. She turns on the tree and then claps, "yay!!". If I wasn't so old and mature, I would do the same every time the Christmas tree lights came on. "Yay!!"


What are your favorite Christmas traditions?

Road Trip!

Once again it's been quite a hiatus between posts. Holidays and vacations tend to do that... any break in the routine and I abandon my blog. Well, I'm back with lots of pictures and fun things to write about. Ben, Emma, and I drove to Utah to stay with my family for a week during the Thanksgiving Break. We stopped at Zions National Park for a night to break up the drive, as well as give us a nice little trip with just the three of us. We had a lovely time. Our hotel was nice (we even watched the second Pirates movie on pay-per-view after Emma fell asleep... Ben hadn't seen it yet), we ate at a nice restaurant for dinner, and we had a lovely morning strolling through the trails in Zions and getting some great pictures along the way. Obviously, above is a slide show of all the pictures we took on our little excursion. The weather was cold, but the fall colors were absolutely amazing! In fact, some of the pictures even look like we were photo shopped in after the fact, because the backgrounds and views were so unbelievable. Anyway, it was a quick, but great and much needed little getaway for us.

The time we spent with my family was really fun. One thing I particularly enjoyed was spending a morning at the new children's museum at the Gateway in downtown SLC. We had a good time, especially Emma. Ben had a particularly good time playing as well. He really enjoyed this animation station where you could create you're own little movie with Mr. Potato Head and other assorted plastic creatures. It was funny.

At the end of the week we drove to St. George and spent the weekend with Ben's family. They were spending Thanksgiving with Ben's aunt and uncle who live in St. George. We went to the temple in the morning, which was great. Ben and I also had the opportunity to the temple when were in Sandy as well. It's always a good week when you go the temple twice, eh? Anyway, that evening we drove to Las Vegas and went to the Beetles Cirque du Soleil show at the Mirage. It was awesome! You can view a little trailer for the show here, but it doesn't nearly do it justice. It was just amazing. So, that was a late night. The show didn't even start until 10:30, and earlier in the day were on Utah time, which is an hour later. So, it was really 11:30 for us. Good grief. I am usually very much asleep for the night by that time. However, it was worth staying up for. We put Adam and Emma to sleep in our hotel room before we left and one of the cousins stayed with them while we partied all night. ;) It's always a rare moment when we get to play late while having a babysitter. How lovely it is when the opportunity comes around.

Our baby is no longer an "it"!

Hooray! We went to our ultrasound appointment yesterday and we learned that our baby is very healthy and strong and....

It's a Girl!

In honor of this next baby being a girl, here is a girly picture of Emma dressed up as a princess:



We are very pleased to finally have some identity to associate with our new little one. It makes it all more real and exciting. And now our planning can really start to begin as well. We've also chosen a name, but you'll have to ask me individually to know what it is. Ben and I lean towards the opposite of secretive when it comes to baby names. With Emma we decided on her name the day we found out the gender... and it seems the same has occured with this one as well. I guess if we tell people a name that we've already decided on, they can't try to discourage us against it or give us too many of their own opinions. I already have so many opinions regarding names, if I included everybody else's we'd never be able to make a decision. ;) We hadn't even discussed names until we were going to bed last night, but we started to talk about it and a name came together extremely quickly. Anyway, we're not keeping this name a secret, but I guess it's just too impersonal if I just post it right here on my blog.

It's been a while since I posted because Ben is on Thanksgiving Break and we've been busy playing and running errands together. We had a lovely Thanksgiving dinner last night. It was a rather early Thanksgiving dinner, yes, but we wanted to prepare a nice feast for ourself and our friends before everyone left out of town to see family. We love to visit our families during the holidays, but we realized that we do miss out on doing our own holiday traditions. For example, Ben and I got to cook a turkey for the first time! This is our fifth Thanksgiving together as a married couple, but we've never cooked a turkey because our parents always take care of it when we go to their places for Thanksgiving dinner. It was nice to learn for ourselves and discover that we can be successful! We are such grown-ups! :)

Today is errand day before we leave to Utah tomorrow morning. We are driving and decided to split up the trip into two days. A 10-12 hour drive is long, particularly with Emma in the back seat and me all pregnant. We've been aching for a short little trip together, just Ben, Emma, and I, so we decided to spend the night near Zions National Park. We hope to get to our hotel around 3 or 4 and spend the afternoon and evening eating out and relaxing. The next morning we'll go through the Park some and take some pictures and then we'll leave to finish the drive to my family's house in Sandy, which I believe is another 4 hours or so. It should be a pleasant trip.

Family Goals

Our family has made some goals recently to help us become closer to one another and more spiritually-minded. One of these goals is to do Family Home Evening every week. We've accomplished this two weeks in a row now! Yippee! Great rewards can come from even small accomplishments. I already feel a difference in our family unity just from successfully having a couple of FHE's. So far I've learned 3 things that help make our time together more enjoyable and something to look forward to. I'm sure this may not be the same for all families, but for us, a successful FHE needs the following guidelines:
1. No longer than about 15 minutes. Especially, now that Emma is joining us, she can only take a brief moment together before she starts to get much too distracted and then we all get frustrated. I guess, of course, if we were doing an activity outside of the home this guideline would change; but, for in the home structured FHE time, we need to keep it short.
2. Keep it centered around Emma. If Emma is entertained, than all of us are happy, so I've been focusing on things that Emma would enjoy, with maybe one short quote that Ben and I can benefit from.
3. Have a treat! We love treats and this is a fun tradition to have a quick dessert for the end of our FHE, like cookies or something. Emma also enjoys helping make the dessert sometimes.

Anyway, I don't have much else to talk about. I'll leave you with an odd Emma picture. She's been enjoying playing with this Halloween bucket in the bathtub. She recently discovered it can be worn as a hat.

It's November!

Happy Day After Halloween! Halloween is one of the few holidays in which I may actually be more excited the day afterwards then on the holiday itself. That's probably because of the even greater holidays just around the corner! I've always found it extremely appropriate to start listening to Christmas music after Halloween. Christmas is too fun to only celebrate for one month... I think it deserves 2. Not to overshadow Thanksgiving, however. I love Thanksgiving as well. It's an enjoyable time. Lots of good food, the last of the pretty fall colors, and time with family, AND the "official" and possibly more socially-accepted-beginning of Christmas! I guess I've made it clear what my favorite holiday of the year is. Why do I love Christmas? This is a good question. Here are some things that come to mind, in no particular order:

1. The holiday music!
2. Snow (Good thing we will be visiting in Utah during the Christmas holidays, otherwise, this most favorite of traditions would be lost... I fear that no snow will be coming to Arizona anytime soon).
3. Christmas decorations
4. A twinkling Christmas tree (I especially enjoy lying underneath the Christmas tree at night with only the tree lights on. It's so pretty to look up through all the lights!)
5. Temple Square outings... always way too cold, but full of great memories!
6. Advent (a tradition from Ben's family that I've particuarly been happy to adopt as one of my own... Over the years, Ben and I have really enjoyed inviting friends over and spending time with them reading scriptures, singing Christmas hymns, and eating awesome desserts!)
7. Getting up early on Christmas morning with the family and fishing through stockings.

There are many more, but I will bore you (if I haven't already) if I continue any further. This last one I mentioned, though, made me think of something else. I have extremely vivid memories of getting up EARLY (like 4:00... and we would have gotten up earlier if mom and dad hadn't started setting rules... later on, I remember we weren't allowed to peek downstairs until 5 and we couldn't wake up mom and dad till 6 or 7). Anyway, my siblings and I would have a pact to wake each other up if were still sleeping so we could go downstairs all together. We would be soooo excited to see what was hiding by the Christmas tree and under our stockings. This makes me realize what a good job my parents did of making Christmas exciting, magical, and memorable for us kids. Now that Ben and I are parents of a growing family, we were now realizing the fun task we have of making the holidays exciting and worthwhile for our children. It was soooo fun to go trick or treating with Emma! I've been way too old for trick or treating for quite some time now and it was wonderful to be able to get away with going out again! I get to relive all my childhood fun all over again through my own kids. How exciting! And this time I get to watch Emma (and other's to come) have fun like I did when I was little. Speaking of having fun, Emma is once again wearing her Tinkerbell costume this morning. She loves dressing up and loves to wear her wings and tutu. She's such a girl.

So, I took some pictures of what the Morning After Halloween looks like. First, is Emma dressing up again (but not in her full attire) and enjoying a taste of her loot from last night.

Speaking of loot, here is a good chunk of the candy Emma has collected over the past few days. Obviously mom and dad will have to help out. Darn. ;)


The last of the pictures is frightening indeed.... and that is of Moldy Pumpkin Man. A thing I've learned is that pumpkins don't last very long in Arizona. It's just too warm, even at the end of October, to keep pumpkins preserved. Poor Pumpkin Man. We will need to dispose of him quickly before we scare the neighbors.

Pumpkins, Costumes, and Candy!

We started the "Trunk or Treating" marathon last night. Emma seems like a real pro. I think she may have done this before in another life (do they do trick or treating in heaven?). Anyway, she carried her pumpkin around even after it was dragging on the ground from being so heavy with candy. She refused to let anyone help her with the load. What a trooper! Trunk or treating is particularly popular around here. In fact, it seems that most kids never do the door to door, at least down in our neck of the woods. The wards have all
started up trunk or treat traditions, in which the kids can collect candy from the back of everyone's decorated vans in a safe contained area. We've enjoyed it and you get a lot of candy without a whole lot of walking! What a bonus. Candy, without exercise. My favorite. So, last night we went trunk or treating in Ben's family's ward and tonight we went out to a friend's ward. We were all dressed up in a theme with Ben's family. Emma was Tinkerbell, I was Tiger Lily, Ben was a Lost Boy, Emily was Wendy, Ben Lee was a pirate, Adam was Peter Pan, Carol was Smee, and Clyde was Captain Hook. We were quite a sight. I never did get a great picture of all of us together, but I've included some scattered photos, so you can get an idea as to what some of us looked like. I hope to get some better pictures on Halloween night, particularly of Emily and Ben Lee because I never did get a decent shot of them in their costumes. Anyway, the trunk or treat we went to tonight in our friend's ward was particularly popular. There was a ton of cars and some great decor. We were laughing at the fact that 95 percent of the cars in the lot were vans. I fear we will be falling into this same mold soon enough. (Gasp!) We ate dinner at Ryan and Taya's home just before going out for our candy exhibition. Taya made a gormet meal of homemade bread and stew and other great goodies. It was wonderful! Below is a picture we tried to take of all the kids on the couch; it was tricky to get everyone to look at the camera.

Before and after our outing with our friends, Ben and I successfully completed carving our Halloween pumpkins. Ben had the clever idea to make a Pumpkin Man. He got three large pumpkins and stacked them on top of each other. We carved the top one with a great silly face. Currently he is out on our closed-in porch, instead of at our front door, so pumpkin smashers won't mutilate his body. I think this is my favorite Jack-O-Lantern we've ever done. Pumpkin Man makes me laugh... a simple face, but full of personality.

Slide Show

I discovered another fun photo gadget, called slide.com. I love the internet! There are so many fun free things. :) Anyway, I just wanted to experiment with this, so I took all my flickr photos and used them for my slide show. Pretty fun, eh?

Get Your Own! | View Slideshow

Recovery

As many of you know, I've had an aversion to hamburgers since I started to get morning sickness with this pregnancy. However, I must truly be recovering, because I ate a hamburger today and I very much enjoyed it! :) What a breakthrough. Ben and I ate a fun restaurant called Firebirds this evening. We went out with friends from school... kind of the calm before the storm of finals which will be starting up in a couple of weeks. We even went without Emma! A friend of mine was so nice as to watch her for us. It's been great because we've just started a babysitting tradeoff. It's wonderful to have someone you can call to babysit, especially someone you trade off babysitting with because then you don't have to pay. I'd much rather pay in labor, instead of cash. Anyway, it's a wonderful feeling to be fully recovered from the sick part of being pregnant. Speaking of recovering, I am finally over my cough. I went to the OB/GYN this past Monday for my second prenatal exam (and the baby is doing great; he says that Lumpy has a good strong heartbeat). I told him about the cough I've had for the past 6 weeks. He listened to my lungs and said that I do indeed have bronchitus. He gave me some great medication and I felt 95 percent better the day after I started taking it! Anyway, he gave me a antibiotic, steroids, chest congestion pills, an inhaler, and some great cough syrup for nighttime. I told him that I hadn't had a full-night's sleep since the coughing started and he prescribed me some really powerful cough syrup that just puts me in a coma at night. I was so excited that there was something safe I could take that could do that for me. I've been sleeping so wonderfully the past few nights. I feel so much better for just finally getting some sleep. Before, I could hardly even nap during the day because I would start coughing whenever I'd lie down. It was incredibly frustrating, because I was absolutely exhausted. I'm just so grateful to finally be better! Oh, and we really love this doctor. Ben came with me this last time and we both agree that he is a great, trustworthy doctor to be taking care of me and little Lumpy. And the most exciting part of all... we have our ultrasound to determine the gender scheduled for Friday, November 17th at 8:30 am. We are soooo excited! I'll start up a poll in a couple of weeks in which you can vote for boy, girl, or other. ;)

Ben is away right now at the hospital working with his preceptor. He needs 10 hours completed before the end of the semester in a few weeks. He's going to spend at least 5 hours tonight and then he'll go again another evening later on. He really enjoys spending time with this ER doctor. It sounds like he keeps things challenging, but fun. Ben seems to really learn a lot while he's there. It's exciting because Ben only has one more semester of classes and then he starts up with rotations. At that point, he'll be moved around every month to a different specialty. He'll get a wide variety of experiences and this will really be when he makes a decision as to what field he wants to work in. It's exciting to see him progress through medical school, especially since he's doing so well!

After 5 months, I finally posted another book review (how embarrasing!). I'm now starting to read the final book in the Series of Unfortunate Events, entitled The End. I'm so excited to see how this story concludes! View my most recent book review for The Screwtape Letters here.

Halloween is approaching...

Oooo yipee! Halloween is almost upon us as we enter the second half of October. I love Halloween... I think this is mostly due to it being the beginning of the holidays. I tell you, though, who arranged the holiday schedule to have the 3 biggest holidays 3 months in a row. Shouldn't we spread the excitement throughout the year a little better? Anyway, I also love the fall and Halloween is the perfect fall holiday. I love Halloween colors and I really love pumpkins! It's fun to decorate with pumpkins and it's great to carve and light a pumpkin to create a lovely Jack-O-Lantern for the porch. For Family Home Evening today we made and decorated sugar cookies in the spirit of Halloween. Emma and I went to the grocery store earlier and bought some things for our cookie extravaganza to be had this evening. She was quite excited to get started. She helped put flour on the counter when we rolled out the dough (and also helped put flour all over herself). Her favorite part, however, was eating the frosting. She alternated spreading frosting on her cookie and taking spoonfuls for herself. It was lovely to watch. Ben did a great job as well decorating his share of cookies. I've been eating his first, because I think they look the most fun. I like to eat fun looking cookies.

Emerging from the Cave...

I've had a leap of hope the past few days that I may actually return to civilation. I think I'm actually beginning to feel better! It's always hard to believe ever actually getting better when you feel so horrible. Anyway, my cough is on the outs and my nausea is much more tolerable.... my appetite is returning... I've been eating foods I haven't been able to eat for the past month (such as pasta, bagels, cheese, etc). Don't talk to me about hamburgers or salads, however. Those are still on my hate list. I was recently watching a DVD that my dad had burned of my mom doing an interview of me while I was 5 months pregnant with Emma. Apparently at 5 months, I was feeling very well.... I was no longer throwing up and I had even gotten over my aversion for hamburgers and salad. Surprisingly, my food likes and dislikes have been the same for this pregnancy as they were the last. (Does that mean another girl?) I thought it would be really different, but they haven't so far. My favorite foods right now (which were the same with the last) are fruit, peanut butter, orange juice, and cereal.

Anyway, since I've begun to come out the fog I've been in for the last while, I finally left the house for a decent outing. (If only the outside of my apartment looked like the picture above!)Ben was so happy that I was feeling better today that he took time off of a few classes and took Emma and I to the zoo. It was really fun! We even bought Emma a very cute "zoo hat" from the gift shop. She actually picked it out. She refused any color but blue. She wore it around the whole day and even went to bed with it. What a funny girl. Ironically, we didn't actually see many animals while we were at the zoo. We spent most of our time eating and watching Emma play on the spray pad and then in the playground area of the farm. We even took some time to eat some ice cream. Yum! We did see some animals, however... all of which Emma really enjoyed. She said "hi!" to them all and got rather affectionate with the goats in the petting zoo. She was petting and hugging all that she could get her hands on. Those poor goats didn't know what hit them. ;) As I write this, I'm uploading some videos of our zoo adventure to add to this post. They are taking forever, because I finally remembered to switch it to high quality video. So, this time they won't seem so out of focus. While they continue to upload, I'll move on to another topic...

Emma's been really getting into dress-up as of late. It started with the Nemo costume we got her. Since then she's gained a growing love for hats, purses, dresses, etc. For Halloween she is going to be Tinkerbell (as part of a family theme of Peter Pan... I will be Tiger Lily and Ben is going to the Indian Chief... the rest of Ben's family will taking the parts of Peter Pan, Wendy, Captain Hook and others). Anyway, Carol and Emily put together a lovely Tinkerbell costume for her. Here's an early photo of Emma trying on her new costume. There are actually some darling shoes with ribbons and bells that go with it, but they are still "under construction". Emma also had fun wearing around some wild rainbow pants (which were actually Ben's when he was a kid. You'll have to ask him why and for what purpose he wore these). So, I'm going to try to compile a dress up box for Emma, since she enjoys it so much. Carol gave us a good start with some hats and other clothing items. I'd like to get her some fun scarves and jewelry and other accessories that she can put on herself and strut around all she pleases. What a good activity for her. ;)

Oh lovely! The videos finished. Enjoy!

Childless for a day

Today was much different than most days. Carol picked up Emma this morning a little after 6 and took her to their house for the day. She wasn't returned until this evening! So, we were Emmaless for the day. It was wonderful! I hope that doesn't sound insensitive, because of course we miss our Emma any time she is away, but it sure was great to have a repreive. I took a great long nap this afternoon and pretty much just spent the day relaxing. It was fantastic! It reminded me a little of when Ben and I were in our married with no children stage of life. We didn't have Emma until 3 years into our marriage, so we had a good long time alone together. It's definitely a different dynamic and lifestyle. But as much fun as it is just the two of us, Emma is just way too amusing to imagine life without her. She keeps us busy and also extra happy. She adds some real purpose to our life. In fact, one of the main reasons Ben and I are so motivated to get through medical school is so that he can be a good provider for our family. We really love being parents! Speaking of parents, just last night, Ben and I stumbled across a Power Point presentation that Emma and I had made for him for this past Father's Day. I've uploaded it to FileFactory. It isn't the most user friendly of file hosting sites, but it was one of the few I could find that would let you upload and share a large file. To view it click on the following link:
Father's Day Presentation. Then scroll down about a third the way down the page to where it says in itty-bitty letters "Downlaod for free with FileFactory Basic". Click on this and then once again scroll down and click on the link that says "Click here to begin your download". The pictures gave us a good laugh and reminded us of how quickly Emma is growing up. For example, she no longer has her pacifiers and she has much more hair! I'll leave you with a picture of Emma when she was a mere 3 months old. What a cutie!

There's a fetus in my belly...

It's been a little while since I blogged, so I feel like I should think of something to blog about. I'm still morning sick (or really, "all-day" sick). I don't know who coined the term "morning sickness", because I'm never just sick in the morning. Anyway, I've been plagued with other illnesses as well, such as a bronchitus-like ailment, and the stomach flu. Some may wonder how I could tell the difference between the stomach flu and morning sickness... well, trust me, there's a big difference, and it's not pleasant. So, the bottom line is that I'm absolutely sick of being sick! I miss being productive and staying busy with the cleaning and taking Emma on outings, and doing grocery shopping and even making mundane post office and bank trips. I miss my routines and just all around feeling well. It's definitely worth it, being sick for my little fetus (a.k.a "Lumpy), but it's not easy and I hope it passes soon. I have 3 friends who are pregnant right now with their second child, just like me, and they all feel like this second pregnancy is much harder than the first. It makes me worried that not only am I sicker than the last time, but that it will linger throughout the entire pregnancy. Oh, good grief!

Well, other than being ill, the only other thing I can think to discuss is the Season 3 Premeire of Lost that aired last night. Man, that show is wild. I'm just so intrigued by the story. Ben and I always have a question/answer/theory session after watching an episode, in which we try to decipher what everything means, and things we desperately want answers to. I'm going to throw out some thoughts on last night's episode:

1. I was shocked to discover that The Others are living in a make-shift suburbia in the middle of the island. This was actually a satisfying discovery for me. I mean, they had hinted in the past that the brown ratty clothes they've been wearing around were merely "costumes". I'm not sure why they want to disguise themselves as crazy native island dwellers, but this is only one of hundreds of other questions I have been asking... best not to get ahead of myself.
2. Why do the Others live on this island? It seems they are actually trying to live normal, modern lives, but how did they get here? I presume that they were all brought here having something to do with the Dharma Initiative, but why are they still hanging around when the project seems to have gone to the wayside? Or has it?
3. I learned from watching the Official Lost Podcast (to view, click on the link and then click on the "Season 3 Video Podcast 1" in the list of Lost videos clips) that there are indeed several factions of "Others". Maybe that Carl guy that was in the cage next to Sawyer is part of some other group, outside of the one we know.
4. Who is Rouseau, really? What are her intentions/loyalties on this island? I have been wondering recently about Henry's capture. He seems to be quite a leader figure with the Others; he doesn't seem like he really would have allowed himself to be captured, unless it was on purpose. Was Rouseau in on his capture to help him get in with the Lost survivors? I definitely think that Henry being captured, and brought back to the hatch, was all intentional, in order for him to get entrenched with the plane crash survivors and to learn about them, and maybe even with the plan to get Michael to do his dirty work with the promise of returning Walt.
5. Speaking of Walt, what is going to happen with him and Michael? There is no way they are really just heading home. They must have been set up for another trap or something. The Lost Podcast says that we will find out about them, but not for a little while. Apparently, we need to learn some other things before returning to their story.
6. What happened to Desmond, Locke, and Ecko? Are they dead? I have a hard time believing that, but I believe they were all still in the hatch when Desmond turned the key and that bright light occured. So, I'm not sure what happened with the hatch and the magnet and all that.

Okay, this is getting way too long. The bottom line is that I have way too many questions, and who knows when they will be answered. I'm with Dadoo: I'm so "lost".

General Conference Weekend

Oh, relief! Emma has gone to bed. She has been very 'alert' today and only took a 30 minute nap. She's been pretty wired lately. It's like her personality has doubled in enthusiasm in the last few days. She's so funny. I've been particularly impressed with her ability to recognize her alphabet as of late. She pretty much knows her entire alphabet, with the exception of a handful of letters. She definitely can't just spout of the ABC song, but she recognizes most letters when shown them. Even when we've been out places, she yells out "B!" or "O!" to me. She's really been noticing letters all around her: on signs, books, food boxes, etc. She is amazing. She really enjoys reading Curious's George's ABC's. She likes the animals in it and all the letters. Ben has recently been trying to see if we can get her to learn her numbers. So far, she says that all numbers are "two". That's amusing.

Ben is studying right now. He's been studying all day, and even sacrificed one of his brief break moments to do the dishes for me. He's really been super dad/husband lately. I've had a complete aversion to dishes and many food items. He's taken it upon himself to keep up with loading and unloading the dishwasher, wiping the counters, and cleaning the pots. What a good husband I have. I don't know what I'd do without him.

So, as the title of this post declares, it is General Conference weekend! I discovered a great option for watching Conference. Recently, BYU TV started up an online broadcast of their shows. You can watch BYU TV live all day from your computer! It's really amazing, and especially great for conference. I was able to lie in bed with my laptop and watch Conference today. It was very comfortable. And the best part is that you can pause and rewind! Awesome! Anyway, the video quality is really great. To view, go to www.byu.tv. Happy Conferencing!

Games

I've been really enjoying playing Yahoo! games the past couple of days. One arcade game in particular, called Dynomite, has some strange memories associated with it. For some reason, I was really into playing this game during the last month of my pregnancy with Emma. I remember sitting there in our Provo apartment playing Dynomite while having contractions. Towards the last few weeks I would have a few contractions a day and sometimes they would come in spurts every five minutes or so. One evening, Ben and I were at home and I was having contractions about every 3 minutes for a couple of hours. We called the doctor and the nurse told us that unless I'm really in pain with the contractions, then it's nothing to go to the hospital for. Well, they weren't anything particularly painful, just tight and strange feeling. The bottom line is that nothing came of it and in the end I was induced into labor anyway. What was I saying before? Oh, yes, Dynomite. My point, I guess, is that now when I play Dynomite, it makes me think about contractions. How funny. And since I'm pregnant again, it has an extra special meaning. I've also been enjoying a game called Typer Shark, which is funny in that it is really just a typing game, like Typing Tutor. But, it's really fun! To me anyway. You have to type given words as fast as you can before the sharks eat you. It's amusing. With both of these games, it has three options for play. You can buy the game for 20.00, or you can download a free trial version, which is just like the game you buy, but you can only play for 60 minutes. The third (and my favorite) option is to play the web version. It's a simpler version of the game, but without any time restrictions and it's free! So try them out. And if you look around, I'm sure you'll find another game or two you'd enjoy as well.

Mom mentioned to me that she's been working on a 500 piece puzzle. Well, I must admit that I was working on a puzzle of the same size last week, but I threw in the towel. I had made some good progress, but finally got to a point where I just couldn't make any more headway, without getting super frustrated. To me, the key to a good puzzle (at least when trying to finish one on your own) is to find just the right difficulty. Even very hard puzzles I can get a good start on, but eventually (unless outside help is given), I get to an impass where I've already put together all the easier parts and then I'm left with 200 pieces or so that tend to be the same color. Blast! So, to me, a 500 piece puzzle is perfect for a group/family project, but if being done alone, I'd prefer a 300 piecer. What's your opinion? Do you like puzzles? What's your frustration limit?

Oh, and ABC is back showing episodes for free online. They have a special Lost preview show, where they go back and look at the last couple of seasons and talk about what's happened. I thought it was entertaining and a good review before starting into the new season next week. To view it, click here and then click on Lost. It will bring up two episodes to choose from: the last episode of Season 2 and the Sneak Peak episode I'm talking about. Happy Lost watching!

Round 2

So, I'm going to make an official announcement for all the world to read and declare that I am 10 weeks pregnant! Yipee! I finally went to my first prenatal appointment yesterday afternoon. They even did an ultrasound! When I was pregnant with Emma they only did one ultrasound at about 20 weeks to determine the gender and just check up on how she was doing. At this new doctor's office, though, they like to do an ultrasound in the beginning to confirm the due date by checking on the growth of the baby. They have ultrasound equipment right there in the office, so it is definitely more convenient. The doctor's office is also attached to Arrowhead Hospital, which is where I will be delivering this new baby when the time comes. By the way, the due date is April 24th, and I should find out the gender around Thanksgiving time. For now, the fetus name is Lumpy, which is what my belly is right now. ;) Emma's fetus name was Squishy. We find that a fetus name is quite handy during this time before the gender is determined, let alone any name ideas. Then we don't have to just refer to fetus as "baby" or "it". Anyway, Lumpy is keeping me quite nauseous at the moment. I hope it will end soon. I've been feeling quite gross for about 3 weeks now and I anticipate about another 2 weeks of this, assuming it goes like the last one. But we will see. Oh, and like I mentioned before, I got an ultrasound done with a cute little picture. Lumpy is small but has a strong heartbeat and was wiggling around. How amazing! I don't have a scanner, but I tried just taking a picture of the photo... it didn't turn out great; even with the flash turned off, I was getting a lot of glare. For now, this will do. Ben is going to try to get it scanned at school so I have a better quality picture saved to the computer. It's nothing that exciting, but exciting for us, so we want to share it.

We got Emma a Nemo costume at the Disney store recently. She thinks it is the greatest. It's really funny. One time she insisted on wearing her Nemo costume, holding her Nemo stuffed animal and watching the Nemo movie all at the same time. What a funny girl. She definitely knows what she wants. Currently, she really enjoys Nemo and Elmo. I'd like to get Emma the new Elmo TMX for Christmas. She'd think it was hillarious. And secretly, I'd like it too. :) If you haven't already seen what the new Tickle Me Elmo can do, check it out on the video that my sister uploaded to the Muffin's blog. That Elmo is so funny.

Girl Shopping!

Oh, Saturday. How is everyone doing today? I am disappointed in that my cough/cold is still grasping on for dear life. I feel like my cough in particular is becomming more and more intense. In fact, Ben and I both have it, and when we are together, we sound like a bunch of dying, old people. I'd say my only hope is that it will past quickly, but Ben has had it for a few days longer than me, and his cough is still going strong. Good grief. Despite our illnesses, Ben thought it would be good for us all to get out of the house together. I haven't left in the house in three days (since I got back from Utah) because I've been feeling so under the weather. Ben thought it would be good to get some fresh air, so we did. We went over to the nearby Arrowhead Mall. It was a fun outing. We even got some fun things. It turns out, we were rather blessed with good fortune this month regarding our bills. First off, since we just traded in the truck to get the Altima, we won't have a payment to pay for about another 45 days, so that means we don't have a car payment to pay this month. Also, we were shocked to receive our utilities bill and discover that they actually owe us 45 dollars! Does that ever happen?! Well, I guess we paid a deposit at the beginning of the year or something, and now that the new payment year is starting, we received it back. What a lovely surprise! In addition to this, we are finally closing our account at UCCU up in Provo, which is where we've been had our auto loan for the truck. When we close it, we'll get 100.00 sent to us from our savings account. Anyway, other than rent, those are some of our largest bills to pay (car payment and utilities), so we justified a little fun money! Ben decided to spoil "his girls" by getting me some cute new shirts and makeup and Emma a new outfit. We even found Emma some very darling pink sneakers and a pink belt. She is so petite that she has been in desperate need for a belt. She turns 19 months old today and she is still often times too big for 12 month old clothes. Especially with pants... if I find something that fits her tiny waste, than the length is usually way too short. So, I think the best compromise is to find pants the correct length and then put on a belt to keep them up. Oh, what a chore, but what a cute Emma we have! :)

Ooooo... so, the 3rd Season of Lost starts on October 4th! I'm pretty excited. I really believe that Lost is the best show on TV right now, with 24 in a close 2nd. I'm not sure what to think coming into this new Lost season. I have so many questions and I'm worried about being disappointed with the answers. So far, I feel like my questions have all been "answered" with more and more questions. It's like a door is opened, only to find 10 more doors behind it. It's frustrating but very exciting. I think this series could go one of two ways... I will either be extremely pleased and satisfied with the story and its solutions, or incredibly disappointed. The writers have just really set up quite the mystery and I hope it all ties together in a logical, yet fantastic way. We will see... Woohoo Lost!

Speaking of TV shows, I've been really enjoying another series called Numbers. It's basically a detective show that utilizes math to solve crimes. It's pretty fun. I've really enjoyed it and have found that the characters (so far) are respectable people who live decent, moral lives. It's rather refreshing... and I love how math is the central theme. It's quite different from other shows on now.

Have a good day, or for whatever is left of it. And Happy 19 month old Birthday to Emma! :)