Random Winter Mix

Olive has a perpetual snuggle partner. 

I think it was about the beginning of December when Weston catapulted himself over the couch in his excitement to see Dad. I heard the crack. Not thud, not smack. But crack. I thought for sure he had busted all his teeth out. Just the chin. And a good gash in his lip where his teeth cut through. Darn kitchen tile! 

This makes the second time I've ended up in the dental chair, with Weston on my lap, getting stitches on his face. I'm so grateful though! The peds office doesn't do stitches and theres no Urgent Care here, so it would have been a long wait in the ER with all the winter germs of Gallup. Bleh. Yay for dentist Dad!

He was a champ, but it wasn't without tears or his whole body seizing up in my arms. I felt so bad for him. 

This was the sweetest scene I could have walked in on, one night. The first bath Dad has given Olive. I think it took 4 months before this happened. I usually bathe her in the day since it's too chaotic at night. 

She gets swaddled with one arm loose now so she has access to that thumb! I thought this pose was funny. "Do you wanna join my crew?" Hot Rod fans?

I thought this little hat turned out cute. I made it for Megan's little guy, Steel.

He might like stuffed animals.

Her middle name really ought to be Blowout. I swear this girl doesn't poop without it gushing out everrrywhere. I need to buy stock in Oxyclean and Shout.

I found Collin ferociously pounding away at a balloon and exclaiming that he was "Goldshmint" and hitting "bombs". Puzzled at how closely that sounded to Goldschmit (and trying hard to recall if that was in fact the name of a baseball player), I questioned him about it. Yup, he knew exactly what he was talking about! Aunt Aubrey taught him all about her favorite players on the Diamonbacks! He was so proud of it too. I'll also get admonished regularly from Weston, with a very sober expression, "There's no crying in baseball." You must have hit home, Aubrey. :)

Oh my heavens. If this didn't give me ulcers, I don't know what will! I was recently called as the ward's Cubmaster and conducted my first pack meeting in December. I was a hot mess. A hot mess, I tell ya! I don't know the first thing about scouting and it's honestly like learning a new language. Belt loops, Webelos, patches, beads, getting hung upside down to get your Bobcat, flag ceremonies, Bears, Day camp, the Law of the Pack, Wolves and cheers! Oh don't get me started on the cheers! It is SO much to learn. And I'm on display, leading all the chaos in front of a room full of parents and kids. I was scared out of my wits. And it showed, I promise. I started 15 min. late and ended 15 min. early. What a circus. Travis blew up 6 black garbage bags full of balloons for the boys to play a game with. He is amazing. We dumped them all in our living room afterward and the boys ran around, playing with them for a straight hour afterward. This will all be a huge learning experience for me. Now that I'm several den meetings in, I can say that I'm starting to like it. It's very disorganized, but I like the boys and my attitude is definitely starting to change. You never know what you're capable of til you try it!

We had a few snow storms before Christmas and I feel like by back door will always have a pile of coats, mittens, boots and hats by it. Along with a muddly trail of footprints around the house. Sigh. Life in snowy places. 

Some tummy time! 

You'd think she was getting teeth because she is ALWAYS knawing on something! Her hands, arms, MY hands, a blankie, towel, etc. Slobbery mess. She seriously has my heart. I just look at her and wonder how I got so lucky. I love this little girl so much.

Now, I'm getting out of order here..... these pictures are from after Christmas. We went to Albuquerque the weekend after we got home and took the boys to a place called Gravity Park. They had a ball. I mean a jump! ;)

The Dad's had a pretty good time too.

I had my good time at Hobby Lobby and TJMaxx. 

And then we all ate good at a Mexican food place called Sadies. It's just so fun for us country folk to go into town. :)

I also got the results from Collin's allergy test after Christmas. High allergy. Class 3 apparently. It was something like 7.5 on a scale of 1-100, so that seemed like nothing to me, but anything over 3.5 is a high allergy. Weird. They only tested cashews and peanuts though so I'm a little irritated. It was no small thing getting him to hold still for that blood draw, and I want to know if he's allergic to any other tree nuts! And even though he hasn't had an anaphalactic reaction before, it's better to be safe than sorry, so we are now the proud owners of Epi pens. Except, not so proud owners. Allergies are so annoying! I wished so bad my kids wouldn't have them. Maybe that's why we got 'em. :(

Some things just make you so giddy happy that you HAVE to dance a jig right in the middle of your kitchen. Cardamom bread does that to me. And I only make it once a year. And since last year's batch got burned, my jig was two years in the making. If you could overdose on Cardamom, I most definitely did that week. I will always revere Diana Hopkins for this recipe!

Farmington, Thumb sucking and More

The weekend before Thanksgiving, we drove into Farmington on a Friday afternoon to get Ol' Dirtay checked into the dealership. Yup, the time had come for him to get fixed! He has been broken for two years now, but still driveable, so we've endured. It started the last winter of dental school and I don't know all the technical terms, but basically he revved uncontrollably when in park or idling. It was kind of embarrassing.... it sounded awful. However, it wasn't too big a deal, except for when on ice, snow, mud or slick conditions. Then, for some reason the car didn't know what to do and the tires would slip and you'd lose control. Since he was our only car in dental school and it was over $1000 to fix, we just prayed really hard and somehow managed to never crash. There were a few close calls though. Last winter, I just drove Trav to work whenever there was snow on the roads. And here we are, two years later and approaching another winter. Fixing this dang car has been on the "to do" list for sooooo long. You have no idea how good it felt to wipe it off my dry erase board. I actually asked Travis for a drum roll.

Anyhoo! We were told the dealership in Gallup was sketchy, so we called into Farmington, got the part ordered and drove it in that Friday. And since Travis is an angel sent from above, he suggested we may as well stay the night. Yesssssss. 

We stopped in at his old office first, to say hi and show off the babers.

Then, the boys played at the bounce house place which is conveniently located next door to Hobby Lobby. Can I get another Yessssss?!

So I shopped with my Olive until my cart was full and I was happy. 

Then we checked into our hotel and headed to Target. Time to fill another cart. :) I finally found wreath boxes. Score.

Next up was dinner at the yummiest Mexican food place around, Si Senor.

Their sour cream dip is to die for. I could hardly get in gasps of air as the chips never stopped entering my mouth. And then there's the Asada burrito. Sigh... pure happiness. And we even ran into some people from our old ward. Fun!

Our hotel was so very conveniently located right next to the mall, so Travis stayed with the boys and I got an hour of shopping in all by my lonesome!

That's when fate happened and I found my new favorite thing! Love!!! Of course, I had to text my sisters first to ask their approval and make sure I wasn't crazy. I'm never too sure when I jump into new fashions.

From there, I had to grab my favorite frozen yogurt before heading back to the hotel. 

The next morning, we picked up the new and improved, but still Dirtay and Travis drove the kids to the Children's museum while I went to my old Zumba class. You guys, this class is the bomb.com. 

I had the biggest smile on my face the entire time. It was like nirvana for my soul. 

Then I met up with the family at the museum. 

So here's another reason why I love Farmington. I got hugs just about everywhere we went. The girl at Bounce Magic was so excited to see me and the boys and meet Olive. (I was still pregnant when I left Farmington, of course.) Everyone at Zumba just about tackled me and was so excited I had come back. And then the lady that runs the museum was excited to see me and chat about life and the kids. Bah! I just miss that place so much. I was really feelin' the love.

After the museum, we got lunch at Mikasa. 

Mmmmmm, hot and sour soup!

Quadruple MMMMM!!! Las Vegas roll!! 

I am now determined to figure out how to make one of these suckers. I just can't wait for a Farmington trip. This stuff is the best.

Then we shopped some more at TJ Maxx before getting Panda Express to take home for dinner and hit the road. 

Just in time, too.

We drove the last hour in some pretty good snow and not the best driving conditions. Ol' Dirtay got fixed just in the nick of time.

Here's a look at our street.

The rest of these pictures are just the random happenings of the past couple weeks.

I love my Weston. He is a sweet hearted goofball sometimes.

Here's how he presented himself after playing with Ruby. Complete with red lip gloss.

Alright, time for the life changer..... my baby sucks her thumb now!!!!!

I cannot express in words how this has transformed my life. She sleeps soooo much better. She'll be crying in her swing, then I'll look over and she's got her thumb in her mouth and has soothed herself to sleep. I have to scoop my jaw off the floor. We leave her one arm out of her swaddle now and it's helped her to take so much better naps. Now she is rested and wakes up happy. It's honestly incredible. The things I've gotten done this week!!! Ahhh! I seriously say prayers all day long, thanking Heavenly Father for this gift... this miracle. I am so grateful! And I'm also crossing my fingers it's not a fluke. Now that I've seen the bright side, I can't go back!! This is just too wonderful.

She also flipped herself over this week. Ack! This is too soon. I really think it was in an attempt to see the TV better. Stinker. She's always trying to watch that thing, no matter where I place her.

Baby stretches might be my favorite thing ever.

FYI, if you forget to make your boys spit their gum out before taking a bath, one might meet you naked in the hallway to happily announce that it's shoved up his nose. Yes, that would actually be Weston. I almost had a panic attack. Trav was at meetings and I thought I'd be driving to the ER. Luckily, I just plugged up the other side and put my hand over his mouth and told him to blow. That boogery thing slid right out. Relief!

This funny thing held her own bottle the entire time!

Friday night was the office Christmas party at Zens. It turned out to be a fun night, but later I told Travis that I felt kind of bad. The rest of the employees and staff (who all happen to be Native Americans) ended up sitting around the tables that were shaped in a big "U" around the room. And all the dentists and one other white lady and her husband sat with us at some tables in the center of the room. We didn't plan it that way, it just worked out that way somehow. It looked like some serious segregation..... hopefully I was the only one that noticed. :/

I feel bad that we didn't get Yolanda in this picture, but this is Brinn and Megan, the other dentist's wives. I love these girls. Gallup would be a sad place without them!

A Year of Reading!

It has been over a year since I wrote about the books I've read! I'm sure no one even cares about these posts, but for documenting sake, I like to do them. And I'm hoping I remembered all of them, but I'm sure I missed a few. So since I'm madly trying to catch up on blogging before Christmas, I'm keeping this short and sweet. I organized them from the ones I liked the least to the ones I liked best.

Except for this first one. I obviously read this for information's sake, so I don't see how I could really classify it with the others. And while I haven't read any other natural child birthing books to compare it to, I really did like this book. It doesn't teach a specific "method" for natural birth, but is more of a general guideline. The most important reason I'd recommend it, whether you're getting an epidural or not, is because of how well it educates you on child birth in general. I think it's really important to understand the stages of labor and what your body is doing throughout them. It also teaches you to have a voice in the delivery room. If a doctor or nurse is being pushy in a way that goes against your birth plan, it's important to vocalize your wishes. Not in a contentious way, but in a firm way. Right after I read this book, I watched an episode of A Baby Story that made my jaw drop. To be very brief, the woman was in labor and not progressing. So the doctor came in and said he wanted to do a C-Section. He said the baby was fine and not in danger and neither was the mother, but since labor hadn't progressed in a few hours, he wanted to a C-section. The family was upset by it, but didn't question it at all!! They basically just figured the doctor knew best and went with it. Now, I know the doctor usually does know best, but in the situation given, a C-section is not necessary!!! This book taught me that one thing you could always request is an hour. "Could we have another hour and then decide?" It never hurts to ask. Anyway, there's obviously a lot more to that, but I would definitely recommend this book!

I was really excited for this book, but it kind of fell flat for me. I felt like there were a lot of tedious details that made it longer than necessary. It's basically about the end of the Civil War and the events that led up to the assassination of Lincoln. Even though I didn't really like it, I'd still like to try reading Killing Lincoln.

This was another book that died with the tedious details. It's separated into two stories... the story of the White City.... the World's Fair in Chicago in the late 1800's. And the story of a serial killer, H.H. Holmes that lived during the same time period. It was like reading two different stories, every other chapter. Morbidly enough, I was pretty fascinated by the chapters about the serial killer. The problem was, the details about the World's Fair were mind-numbingly thorough. Things about the architecture and architects that no regular person could care much about. But maybe, that's just me. I did learn quite a lot of interesting things about the fair in general but could have cut out about 75% of the other facts. And it's LONG! Plan on devoting a lot of time to it.

This is the first book I listened to and I think listening to it wasn't the best idea. At that time, I didn't know you could speed up the narration and it was terribly slow. The story just dragged out forever. However, it was an interesting story and gave me a better perspective on the Navajo people that I hadn't previously had.  It was about a group of Navajo men that enlisted in the army during WWII and were instrumental in us winning the war by developing a secret code that depended on the Navajo language. 

This was a fictional book that's mystery captivated me most of the time. It's a very unusual story that requires a lot of imagination and speculation. I think I enjoyed it until about 3/4 of the way through when I was ready for it to be over. :) I would recommend it, however, to someone with a bit more patience, than myself.  

So this shows just how bad my memory is!! I read this over a year ago and don't remember a lot of the specifics. It's a kind of economics book that explains the author's theory on how little things can make a big difference. He describes rules of epidemics and what sociological changes can make an idea "tip". And it's a lot more interesting than I just made it sound!

I would have never read this if it wasn't for book club, but it turned out to be really good! It's about a woman in Africa that sets up the first woman's detective agency in her country. It's fictional, but includes real details about the ideas, customs and traditions in Africa, which I found fascinating! (The author grew up in Africa.) Just about every chapter is a new mystery that she is called on to solve and it really captured my attention. It's a really quick and easy, but good read!

I love memoirs. And I was glued to this book until I found out it wasn't real! Bug! It totally makes you think it's an actual biography. And I guess a lot of it was based on a real woman, but not as much as you're led to believe. Still, it was very well written and tells the story of a young girl, sold into slavery, so to speak.  Obviously, geishas are a real thing, so it was still interesting to learn a bit about that "trade". I had a hard time putting it down.

This was such a good book. I think just about everyone has heard of Stephanie Nielsen, the Nie Nie Dialogues and her story of crashing in a plane with her husband, but it was still so interesting to read about it all in greater detail. I loved hearing about her life growing up in Provo, how she met her husband, and the beginnings of their marriage and family. She is inspiring in how much love she has for being a mom. She truly has found joy in motherhood. Her story of survival and being guided out of the plane by her deceased Grandmother was as touching as it was faith promoting. And then all the simple things about our bodies, that we take for granted, was highlighted by her struggle to recover from the severe burns all over her body. Her story is truly amazing. (Side note: I got to meet her last week on Thanksgiving!!)

I don't even know how I could summarize this book. Obviously, it was my favorite, since it's last, but I just couldn't do it justice in any type of summary. The only thing I can say is, read it! :) I'm sure it could be noted as a controversial book, but I didn't feel that way about it at all. The most important things it did for me was encourage me to live my life more righteously and try harder at being in tune with the Holy Ghost. Oh yeah, and get my food storage going!!!

I'm including this one last, because I haven't finished it, and I don't think I probably will. I tried listening to it, but for some reason, it's been really hard to listen to. I wish I had just bought a hard copy! I've listened to most of it and can tell I probably would have liked it if I had read it, but not so much otherwise. Sometimes for me, I need to see the words to generate the story in my mind. That probably made no sense! It's a very mysterious, inventive sort of story though. I'm sure most people would really enjoy it!

Any good recommendations??!!!
I'm currently listening to the Great Gatsby, and have the Elizabeth Smart story and The Other Boleyn Girl on deck. What has been your favorite read this year?!

Olive's Blessing

2013 Family Pictures

I didn't want to take family pictures this year. I don't think many Mom's that just had a baby care for pictures of themselves and I was no different. But it snowed so beautifully one Sunday, and Megan encouraged us to just do it. I couldn't be more thankful! Love this sweet family of mine!