favorite things

Raindrops on roses, and whiskers on kittens,

Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens,

Brown paper packages tied up with strings

These are a few of my favorite things!

Sorry, I just had to. I love the Sound of Music.

Here are a few of Anna's favorites lately...


1. UNPACKING and pulling out anything and everything she can get her hands on. She empties it, I fill it back up and then the game starts over. I started keeping some type of basket or box for her in almost every room of the house now hoping that she'll get into that first instead of...hmmm...say daddy's expensive text books that she loves ripping pages out of!


2. TORTILLAS. It's no wonder she loves them because Dave and I both are partial to Mexican food, but this girl LOVES to eat tortillas.

3. STANDING. She wants to pull herself up and stand and pretend to be big all day long.


4. BA! Her favorite word is "Ba" and "Bob". And sometimes "ra-ra". She will "ba" about everything all day long. She thinks we're having a conversation and it cracks me up. This one is going to be a chatterbox I have a feeling!

5. BATHS! She has always loved bath time, but now it is getting out of control. I think I need to start wearing my wellies and poncho when I give her baths from now on. She loves to splish-splash and is so sad to get out of the tubby. She does not however, like to get water in her eyes. So I bought one of those ridiculous visors that I thought only overzealous parents who buy everything from One Step Ahead would buy. Well, it works and it saves some tears, literally. And she looks hilarious in it.

6. READING books! (or at least pretending to) She loves to hold them and flip the pages and sometimes she'll just stare intently at the pages. Her favorite books to look at? The $1 ones I got at the Target Dollar Spot. Love that place!

7. NO RIBBONS! She loves to find the bows I slyly put on her head and pull them out and try to eat them. It's so sad because she looks so good in bows. :) And I just started getting into making them.

8. LEAPFROG. She loves her Leapfrog activity table. My aunt gave this to me as a shower gift and I've been antsy to get this out, but couldn't until our downstairs was back. It was the best surprise for her when we set it up. I really like the leapfrog stuff. She pulls and pushes every knob and doo-dad and dances to the music.

9. AVOIDING NAPS. She tries her hardest every day to NOT fall asleep. Sometimes she succeeds and sometimes mommy wins. She's a pretty good night sleeper, but doesn't like to sleep in the day. Does anyone have a nap secret?

10. EXPLORING. She is everywhere these days. I love how exciting everything is to her. Isn't that the cutest ruffle-bum ever?

11. RAIN. With all of the rain lately, it's been hard to avoid her getting wet here and there. Well, it's a good thing I guess, because she thinks those drops are pretty hilarious. I can't wait for the day we can jump in a puddle together.

12. KIDS. She LOVES being with and watching other kids. She thinks they are so funny. I think she would like church more if she could hang out in Nursery the whole time. Here she is with some of her favorite kids, her cousins. As you can see, Crew and Titan are quite taken with her too. It's so cute how much Romey and the boys love her.

13. TEETH. OK. Probably not her favorite, but I just want to document that she has 3 more new teeth! She has her front two and one more on the bottom. 5 total now. I'm going to miss that toothless smile.

Those are a few of Anna's favorite things these days. As for me, here's what's topping my favorites list lately:

1. Zip-loc bags. I put everything in them these days. Whoever invented these things is my favorite. I am considering getting rid of my diaper bag and just getting one big zip-loc bag and fill it with lots of little zip-loc filled bags. Then I could always find what I am looking for. I just need to get one with handles...


2. Cinnamon Buns ice cream. Ben and Jerry, why do you do this to me? This is the most delicious ice cream ever (if you like cinnamon rolls, which I do) Caramel ice cream + cinnamon bun dough + cinnamon streusel swirls = HEAVEN. I took one bite and I was seriously scared to take another. This stuff could be dangerous. So be careful with it. I don't need any more "buns" than I already have that's for sure.


3. Friends. I am so glad I have such good friends. And I'm glad to know that they'd be there for me whenever I need them.


4. Fall colors and smells. What's not to love?


5. Fleece. I just want to wear my fleece hoodie all day, every day. Is that okay?

Now I just want to snuggle up with my favorite things and people and watch Sound of Music.

What are some of your favorite things? (Not of all-time, just in this moment-in-time)

FINALLY!

Our house is (almost) back to normal! The walls are back, the carpets are cleaned, the last paint stroke has been painted (we did the last coat since the "professional" just couldn't quite seem to get the texturing right), and the floors are shined! Can you believe it took over 2 months? Including 2 weeks of moving out? It was craziness, but we are glad to have our house back. I must say that I don't think it will ever be the same, but in trying to keep with my new theme (see previous post...embrace the benefits) I am going to appreciate it for how it is. It is just a great feeling to be able to use our basement again! With Anna crawling, it makes such a difference to be down on the carpet instead of those slippery hardwoods. Plus she can't get in to quite as much trouble downstairs. The only things left to do are some touch ups on our hardwoods (hopefully he's coming tomorrow!) and a new cabinet door in our kitchen. Yay! I'll be so glad to be done with all of this! And it certainly is nice to have this place feel like home again.

On an unrelated note...Anna has finally made the switch to whole milk! It was a little earlier than I originally planned, but I started noticing she wanted to nurse for comfort in addition to just hunger. And if that kept up, I knew it would be harder to ween the longer I went. Plus we have a big trip coming up in a few months, and she is not a very discreet feeder, so I wanted to get her adjusted before we leave to avoid any potential flashings to the general public and fellow plane passengers. I set out to make a complete transition...whole milk in a sippy cup. Well, after days of trying many varieties of sippy cups (and about $20 in sippy cups later!) I think it's safe to say she wasn't quite ready for that yet. As soon as I tried the bottle, she took right to it. We'll save the sippy cups for later I guess. The greatest news of all is that I won't have to pump anymore at work! I'm sick of carrying that dumb black backpack with me. So it's another big milestone for Anna and me! I am still nursing for mornings and nights, so the success of that cut off is yet to be determined. But for now, she's a whole milk girl during the day! This is probably pointless info for you, but it consumed a lot of my week last week, so it's great news for me! Sorry if it was too much info for you readers!

And I finally got to use Dave's birthday present. It was like he knew what was coming or something. He gave me a gift certificate for a massage. How did he know how bad I would need it? He bought it 2 days before the flood. I went on Thursday and it was HEAVEN! I normally am not into the whole spa thing because I think it's so expensive, but after a few massages this past year, I think I need to reconsider. Must be the motherhood back pains or something. I ask Dave for a massage every day, but I just get a pat-pat, scratch-scratch, rub-rub, and a pat. When I was getting my massage, I was wishing that Dave was going to masseuse school instead of medical school. ahhhh. bliss.

Weekend in Yellowstone

Last weekend we decided to take a quick, spur of the moment trip up to Yellowstone. We thought we'd take advantage of the nice weather and a free weekend for Dave while we can. Unfortunately, neither of us have very reliable cars, so we had to rent a car to make the trek up there. We hope to have a car that can make it up to Park City and back okay one day! It was a quick trip, but we got a lot in the two and a half days we were there. Here are some highlights of the trip...

Idaho Falls. Not much to do here besides look at the Falls, the temple, and hang out at Chili's or Applebee's. Did we miss anything?


Buffalo sighting #1. I forgot how MASSIVE these things are! He was seriously bigger than our Ford Focus!

Dave and Anna at Firehole Falls. She was so excited to get out of her car seat.Firehole River. (I really think Dave was trying to get a picture of the girls behind us)Anna wanted to jump in so bad! My faithful husband walking on water.

Mid Geyser Basin. Don't mind the wind-blown hair. This geyser was 300 ft across! I must say that geysers are the weirdest things and they stink, but they can be really beautiful. I can't imagine what it would have been like to have been the person who discovered this area.
Anna enjoying her first pickle. She loved it! She must get this from Papa Wally.

Old FaithfulIsn't this weird? It looks like the moon or something. This one reminded me of a witch's brew (or maybe its just that I'm excited for Halloween)Buffalo sighting #2. It's amazing how close you can get to them.

Fishing Bridge.

Buffalo sighting #3. These two male buffalo were getting into a brawl over a lady buffalo. Yup, right in the middle of the road.Closer shot of the battle. Most people that were out their cars started to make a run for it at this point.
Buffalo sighting #4. See all of those cars backed up? We were all at a dead stop because this certain buffalo decided to make a dead stop right in the middle of the road. He wouldn't budge for about 15 minutes! After this, we started to get sick of the buffalo holding us up and stopped taking pictures. There were 2 or 3 more herds along the way out of the park (they must like causing traffic jams) Anna would have loved this if she had a better view. She can't see much besides upholstery from the rear facing car seat. BEAR WORLD! Dave has always loved bears and one of the main purposes of this trip was to visit Bear World. It's this funny little park outside of Rexburg that has adorable baby cubs, a petting zoo, some kiddie rides, and the big draw, a bear park, where you can drive around and look at bears close up. Dave has always wanted to touch a bear. Well, now he's done it! For an extra fee (of course) you can have the chance to feed the baby cubs. Dave got to feed all of the cubs (there were about 7 I think). He loved every second of it. As Anna and I were watching, I could see the excitement of a little boy in his eyes. He had that awkward, excited smile. I thought he was going to come out skipping. It was worth every penny. And here he is petting one of the cubs. They're not as soft and cuddly as they look.
Twinkie and Doodle.Anna LOVED the petting zoo. Here she is petting the baby goat.And checking out the baby deer.

Watching the beautiful swan. It's always scary to be on a bridge with Anna. She just wants to jump right in!

And after a hundred pictures later, (sorry, I kind of got carried away) here are some good shots of the bears in the park. We had a fun time and can't wait to take our family back to Yellowstone when we have a little bit older kids so they really enjoy all of the fun sites and animals.

13 going on 30

My little neighbor, Madde, turned 13 yesterday. She has been talking about her birthday for months now and has been so excited. Unfortunately we will miss her birthday party on Saturday, but she came over with her friend yesterday and we had a little celebration with Anna. We had to move out of our house for 2 weeks while they were re-doing our floors and so we didn't see Madde for awhile. The day we got back she came over and I couldn't believe the girl that walked through the door. Once she started talking it seemed like she had grown up 5 years in the 2 weeks we were gone. Does junior high really do that? The day before school she was showing me her school clothes and Hannah Montana folders, and now she's talking about all the "HOT GUYS" at school. How did this happen so quickly? And I was in shock about some of the things she was telling me. I guess I forget what it's like to be in junior high, but they just seem too young to know about some of this stuff. And do 7th graders really make out at McDonald's? gross! I can't help but worry about her and then it makes me worry about my own little sweet Anna. What's it going to be like for her? How can I protect her from gross boys? I know this is a ways down the road, but ever since Madde came over last Friday, I can't stop thinking about it. When I was little I promised my mom I wouldn't grow up, but I guess I broke that promise. How can I get Anna to keep hers? Big questions with no answers, I know. It's just part of life I guess. Madde really is 13 going on 30 now, so when I was at Target and saw that movie, I knew it was the perfect birthday present for her. She said she was going to watch it last night, I hope she did and I hope she can just enjoy being 13 for awhile and not try and keep up with the 17 year olds.

embrace the benefits

I've been purposing avoiding all blogs lately because I seem to get sucked in to the many blogs out there and then the time that I complain about never having is gone. I'll try to do better now that things are starting to settle down a little more. I must admit that I've had numerous blog posts about silly ramblings composed in my head, but I never got around to actually posting any of them. Well there is one that I just can't get out of my head. It actually goes back to a relief society (our women's group) lesson in church 2 weeks ago. The lesson was on gratitude. Our teacher talked about not only having gratitude for the kind deeds and blessings in our lives, but also for the trials. Being grateful for a trial is a little harder than writing a thank you note to a neighbor for a delicious dinner. Our teacher shared her secret "slogan" for her life that applies to this idea...


Embrace the benefits!


Maybe its because the teacher is so sweet and cute or maybe its because I can identify with her so much (her husband just finished orthopedic surgery residency), but I just really loved her outlook on this. (For example, Her bed ridden mother-in-law who was suffering from cancer told her that she was lucky that she gets to take a nap every day) She's had a tough time in some areas of her life and she just made me realize and reminded me that life is more about how we look at things and what we learn from what happens to us instead of what actually happens to us. (does that make sense?) Anyway, I really am going to try to "embrace the benefits" of my life more often. With everything that's happened this summer, I think I need to do a benefit audit to get myself in the right frame of mind. (Sorry if this is boring to read. It's for me, not you, so go ahead and skip to the next blog if you want.) For instance, the flood: our house is ALMOST back to normal! we got new a new paint job in our downstairs and changed the color of our study while we were at it, we have newly shined hardwood floors upstairs, while everything was out of our basement we re-organized some things so we'll be more ready when we move next year, I had a good excuse not to cook for almost 2 months! I've learned how to deal with contractors and lazy workers, and I am even more grateful for our home now. And my little soiree in the ER made me realize how grateful I am for my health. And I did get to miss work the next day to sleep all day. That was nice! Not sure what the benefit is from my speeding ticket last week...(might need some help on this one)maybe my $82 will go towards help building nicer roads? I'll be more a more cautious driver? (even though I got tricked. I hate it when they catch you at the bottom of a hill. Come on! 9th south? I have to go easy on my breaks - our car is old!) The benefits of the reunion madness was that we got to see some fun old friends and we got a few free bagels from Einsteins! The time and effort for Dave's residency applications will hopefully bring us a benefit of a good match next spring. Although it was time consuming, it was kinda fun to review all of his accomplishments as we wrote his personal statement and application. I am always amazed how hard he works and the things he is able to do. I hope everything works out and that he matches to a good program. He deserves it! Okay, now I am digressing. I truly have so many "benefits" in my life. I love our little family. I hope to embrace the many benefits of life that are in our future because I know there will be many more to come!