Our Weekend

This weekend we had the very enjoyable experience of babysitting for a full 24 hour period, from Friday evening to Saturday evening, for James's cousins. Their kids, Jonas and Max, are so much fun, so we were really looking forward to the weekend. We exchanged our babysitting services for Max's old crib, so we are really feeling like we got the better end of the stick here, but sh, don't tell Emily.

We had a real blast with the kids, but unfortunately I forgot my camera, so we have no pictures of all the things we did, but here's a quick rundown of the highlights of the weekend:

Friday night - we had pizza for dinner (yum) and just played with the kids til bedtime. Max wanted to play with puzzles (probably cuz we did that last time we babysat) but I couldn't find them so I promised him we'd find them the next day. Kids went to bed without a fuss, whew!

Saturday morning - 7:15, James comes in with the boys and Max jumps on the bed, saying "Charity! Can we play puzzles?" He hadn't forgotten. He's good at remembering, that kid. We settled on playing puzzles after breakfast.

Breakfast - since the kids had gone to bed so well the night before, we had promised them a fancy breakfast. We made eggs and bacon and some orange juice. James did the bacon, I did the eggs - it was fun to cook together.

Puzzles - I texted Emily and found out the location of the puzzles, and Max was ecstatic. He was doing little hop skips and rubbing his hands together. If you have never seen an excited 2 year old, you have not lived.

Playing outside - we spent a good chunk of the late morning/early afternoon playing with the boys and their cousins/neighbors outside. James watched the kids for a bit so I could shower and clean up a little, but Max soon came and demanded that I come play with him, so... no makeup that day :P

After the cousins had to go, the boys came inside and we made cookies together. That was the most adorable thing I have seen in a long time. They wanted to help with everything and they were so good at sharing and giving each other turns stirring and mixing in the ingredients. The best part was when I let them crack the eggs (I'll admit, I really just wanted to see what would happen). The eggs sort of exploded in their little hands and we had to pull out the shells, but it was just so fun. Don't worry, they washed their hands afterward. Jonas then had fun sculpting cookies into all sorts of weird shapes, only to watch them melt down into pretty normal looking chocolate chip cookies as they baked in the oven. Science!

While the cookies baked, we made sandwiches and Jonas had the brilliant idea to take them to the park for a picnic. So we packed up everything for the lunches, got in the car and went off to find Discovery Park. I thought James knew where it was and he thought I knew where it was and it turned out neither of us knew anything, so we just drove around Pleasant Grove for about half an hour before finally calling a friend (thank you Jordan!) and having him look up directions for us. We found the park, had a lovely picnic (I swear it was like 60 degrees outside on Saturday, beautiful!) and then played on all the fun equipment. Max did not want to get out of the swing, I actually took a few pictures of that on my cell phone cuz he was so adorable. I'll try to figure out how to upload them later. Then we went for a walk around the park and watched the snow melt, which I must say is much more exciting than it sounds.

After the park, we came home, popped popcorn and watched a movie, finishing just before Ryan and Emily got back. All in all a pretty successful day. Jonas at one point said, "This day could not get any funner." That's what I like to hear ;)

I'm in Love

Have you ever been in love, but you couldn't be with the object of your affection? And every day feels like a week because you are counting down the minutes until you are once again reunited? Well, that's how I feel. About our new couch.

James and I went shopping last night "just to look" at new couches for our living room. I guess I've been "nesting" or whatever--I've been feeling like we need some nicer things in our home (you know, some things that didn't come from a garage sale for five dollars and have gross yellowed cushioning popping out all over the place, yes couches I'm talking about you). So we went to R.C. Willey with the intent of picking out some plush leather couches that would be classy and comfortable. Comfortable over classy, but class was still a goal. But then we saw this sectional, and sitting on it was like all your dreams coming true at the same time. So soft. So big. So dreamy. Here, I'll show you what I mean:


See? See what I mean? Who wouldn't love that? And no, it's not leather . . . but sometimes love doesn't come in the form you're looking for. But when it comes, it's infinitely better. It's microfiber, so it will clean almost as well as leather, and it will be nicer for guests to sleep on I think.

So, now you know the love story, but it's not quite completed yet. We have to wait a few more weeks for our tax rebate to come in so we can go in and pay the rest of the price and take our beautiful couch home. Until then, I will dream . . . and cross days off the calendar.

Five Minutes? For Real?

Here's a really cool video that shows you how to do a few different hairstyles in five minutes. Can't wait to try them.

New Addiction

So, I haven't attempted the Wii Fit again recently, but I have found other uses for the Wii that are almost equally satisfying. Well, just one use. Playing Super Mario 3.
Seriously, I do not think a better game has been invented (though my husband would disagree with me and probably provide a very philosophical discussion about the merits of various video games). I have been working my way through the levels over the past two days (with James's help from time to time, though I'm getting to the point where I can beat almost everything on my own), and it has a very addictive quality to it. I think what it is mostly is that as a kid I was never able to get past the second world... you know, the one with all the sand and the evil fire snakes that will not die--or move in a predictable pattern. Now I'm in the sixth world and it's very satisfying. Forget the fact that there is no real-life applicable skill involved and no actual reward. It's just fun.

Revisions Needed

Apparently the way I was doing things was better, at least in some ways. Jumping out of bed and exercising like I did on my mission is apparently not going to work for me while I'm pregnant. I tried it this morning (yay! I actually did it!), but way too early into the first yoga exercise I got terribly dizzy and by the second one I had to step off the balance board and head to the bathroom (with my trainer's obnoxious taunt of "Hey those muscles aren't going to tone themselves you know!" following behind me). While crouched over the toilet, I recalled how I've read a few times that morning sickness is best handled by eating something as soon as you get up and then resting twenty or thirty minutes before getting out of bed. I've never felt sick in the morning before - and there's why. James brings me food and I sit up in bed for at least half an hour before moving to the office. There I was doing everything right and thinking I was doing everything wrong. I'm going to have to come up with a new plan for exercise, because I don't think what I did this morning was beneficial to anyone. Ouch.

Change is Hard

After a long day of doing pretty much nothing yesterday, I found myself lying in bed thinking how much I miss my days as a missionary. It was kind of a random thought. I mean, I've been home for over two years now and I'm quite settled into life, but there are just some aspects of life as a missionary that I started to really miss. So I started making a list in my head, trying to pinpoint what I missed that I could probably still have, even as a non-missionary. The list ended up being:

1. Getting up in the morning, praying, and getting right to exercising.
2. Having an hour after that to eat, get dressed, and get mentally prepared for the day.
3. Set time to study the scriptures and the feelings that come with that - invigoration, enlightenment, excitement, and the sort of indefinable feeling that my testimony was constantly growing.
4. A sense of purpose to my day.
5. Sharing the gospel. (You knew that had to come in there somewhere)

Then I started formulating a plan of how I could do those things.

A. I could get up about an hour earlier in the mornings and instead of having James bring me my laptop so I can start working in bed, I could get up, pray, and go turn on the wii fit. Exercise, check.
B. Even though I loved having that hour as a missionary, maybe I could cut it down to half an hour (that way I can still start work around the same time) - I can eat, shower, and get ready rather than having James bring me breakfast in bed and hanging out in my pajamas all day.
C. Put off starting work another 1/2 hour (I'm on flex time and I work from home, so this is all feasible) so I can study my scriptures. It's not the two hours of a missionary life, but it's something and I think it would bring a lot of those same feelings.
D. My fourth item on the list is a little bit more difficult to pinpoint, but I just think if I did more with my day than complete my work and then flail around on the internet trying to find something interesting to read or look at for hours on end I would feel more like I had a purpose and I would definitely feel more of a sense of accomplishment at the end of the day. There are so many things I want to do - sew, write, clean, get organized. If I just chose one of these things to do a day I think I would feel better about myself and my life. But I very often use the excuse of how sick I feel to just not do anything but sit on the couch and quietly lament the queasy state of my stomach and watch reruns of Friends. Anyway... moving on to the last one.
E. Our ward has invited us to participate in the set a date program. There, right there is one way I can get back into the gospel sharing mode.

So, Ha! I hatched this brilliant plan for how I was going to improve my self and my day. I had a plan. I set my alarm clock for 7:30 (not the hour I was planning, but you got to ease into these things sometimes) and snuggled happily into my covers. It was 11pm - I was going to get plenty of sleep and have plenty of energy the next morning to fulfill all my plans. Then it was 11:30. Then 12. 12:30. Ugh, I was still not asleep. I got up and wrote an article for an online magazine (we'll see if it gets published), went back to bed. 1:30. The last time I looked at the clock it was 2:00. I turned the alarm off. Ugh.

And so my day today started pretty much like every other, except that I slept in until 9 rather than 8. James brought me my Ovaltine (are you getting the impression from this post that I have the best husband in the world? because I do.) and here I am still in my pajamas, with my laptop, in my bed.

Basically, change is hard. But I'm not giving up. I'll try for the getting up early tomorrow, but even today - as soon as I finish this post, I'm going to go, get dressed, and try to salvage what I can of my plan. Because if I learned anything on my mission it's that even though change is hard, people do it. They really do it. And I can too.

Fruit, Anyone?

There is a trend out there that I simply do not understand, and that is the practice of comparing the size of a baby growing in the womb to various fruits and vegetables. As the growth of your fetus progresses, you are cheerfully told - it's now the size of a lentil! Ooh, now it's as big as a pineapple (quite the growth spurt there)!

Now, I feel there are several flaws in this system. First, it may just be me, but it seems that comparing your growing child to something you ingest just seems wrong. The baby is already inside of you, do you have to start thinking of it as if it were something you ate? "Oops, I ate a poppy seed and over the course of forty weeks it has gone from poppy seed to blueberry to lime to squash to oh my gosh it's a baby!" Weird. But maybe that's just me.

On a more universal area of complaint, any one who has ever been through the produce section of their grocery store, regardless of whether or not they consume fruits and vegetables, knows that the size of produce varies. Sometimes greatly. There are farmers out there growing strawberries the size of your hand, and there are those little tiny wild strawberries you find that are the size of your pinky nail. I mean, we're not really talking about a standard system of measurement here.

On top of that, they have chosen some rather obscure fruits and vegetables for you to compare your fetus to. Your child is now the size of a kumquat. Who in the heck has seen a kumquat, much less eaten one? I for one don't have a clue how big or small a kumquat is? Others making the list of obscure fruits and vegetables: fig (I mean, we've all had the newtons, but have you ever actually eaten a fig?), turnip (you hear about them, but they are sort of mystical), rutabaga, jicama (I doubt I ever would have seen a jicama if it weren't for dear Shelly and the vegetable experimentations of '04), and crenshaw melon. Yes, at 36 weeks, the baby is the size of a crenshaw melon.

I talked to a friend at work about this, and he suggested that they set up this system because women have a hard time getting a visual when they hear something like "two inches" or "almost an ounce." I found that vaguely insulting, but he may be right. I suppose it's nice to get a visual, but still... could they not have chosen something a bit more appropriate, consistent, and - heck - at least commonly known to give women an idea of the size of the little person inside them? Anyone have any suggestions? We could revolutionize the whole industry of baby-measurement-comparisons.

In any case, ours is the size of a lime.

Geocache: Take 2

So, we went out for another geocache adventure on Monday. After realizing that the cache we had chosen was actually placed in someone's front yard and deciding that we didn't want to go digging through the snow with people watching from their front window, we decided to do a reprise of our first cache and see if we could actually find it this time. The coordinates were still in the GPS so off we went up the mountain again. The snow had melted quite a bit since the last time we were up there, so the trip was significantly faster and once we reached the designated spot, the cache was practically in plain sight. How could we have missed it? Oh yeah, it was covered in snow. Turns out snow is better camo than camo is.

So we found the cache, wrote in the log, replaced a keychain with a whistle, and felt extremely more satisfied than we did after finding the rusted out steel drum. Yay for geocaching during the day!

Filling out the log.

The keychain we took from the cache.

So "in plain sight" may have been a bit of an exaggeration. Can you find it?

How bout now?

Afterwards, we went for some ice cream on center street and walked to another cache, which wasn't so much a cache as a "Hey, find this cool tree using your gps." It's behind the courthouse and is apparently some sort of crazy crossbreed tree made from the parts of three different trees. Pretty cool looking huh?

Our New Hobby

My awesome parents got us a GPS unit for Christmas (Ok, technically, it was James's present, but heck I am going to get almost as much enjoyment out of that thing, I tell you). Not only was it particularly useful when we needed to find our way around the unfamiliar city of Denver -

- quick story. So we were out and about shopping and Mom really wanted to stop at a Burger King, since there aren't any in Greece. So James whipped out the GPS and hastily found what we were looking for. The GPS guided us masterfully there in its lovely, male, Britishly accented voice, right about until we hit the last turn. It pronounced the street that the Burger King was on in an extremely unfathomable way, and while we were still laughing at that, it proudly announced "Arriving at Bur-jer King, on left." Anyone up for a cheese burjer? Ok, now back to our regularly scheduled program -

So, not only was it useful finding our way around Denver, it has also provided us with an entertaining hobby now that we have arrived at home. We have discovered the adventure that is geocaching. Basically, people go out and hide small trinkets and treasures in interesting, beautiful, or historical places then record the GPS coordinates on an official geocaching website. We, the brave explorers, then acquire said coordinates and go on our search for the hidden treasures, with the GPS system as our guide. Once we locate the treasure, we can take something out of it and replace it with a treasure of our own. There's also usually a logbook to record your information in, any comments you'd like to make, and what you took and replaced it with. I think it has to be the neatest thing since popsicles. We've even created our own logbook in which to record our adventures, keep photos, and perhaps collect some of the smaller treasures we find.

Another version of the activity is called letterboxing, and instead of trading treasures, you create a unique stamp specific to you and when you find the cache you stamp its logbook with your stamp, and stamp your logbook with the stamp kept in the cache. Call me silly, but it just seems like such an awesome adventure. A fun way to connect with other like-minded (some may call us crazy) people, a really great way to get out and spend time outdoors, and the whole treasurehunt aspect just makes it that much more fun. Anyway, I've babbled about this long enough. If you're curious, you can go read the wikipedia articles on geocaching and letterboxing. They are fascinating.

Here are some of the pictures from our first geocaching adventure. Unfortunately, we're not sure if we actually found the cache. Reports online said the cache might be damaged, but what we found was REALLY damaged - so maybe the real cache is still up there somewhere. The snow and the dark wasn't really conducive to a successful adventure. Once this blasted snow stops falling, we might be able to get out and do some more.

Here's what we found: a rotted out steel drum. Dubious, I must say.

Christmas Pics

Here are some of my favorite pictures from our trip to Colorado:
Our gift to Beck and Ainsley this year consisted of a trunk filled with various articles of dress-up clothing. Sadly, I didn't get a picture of the box itself, but I did get these cute shots of the kids playing with the hats, which they decided they needed for their first post-Christmas bike ride. To keep the sun out of their eyes, you know.






Eli got these little froggy slippers and a little stuffed frog from us. And he gets to play with the dress-up box too - when he's up for it.


And here are just some random pictures of the kids, etc., opening up presents.


James got this awesome Giants hat from Cyndi - way to pick em, Cyn. He loves it!

Mom decided it would be fun to curl my hair, so I spent most of Christmas Eve with my hair in curlers. The result was quite poofy, but not entirely uncute. Here's a neat picture of me and Ainsley - her curls are natural.

Grandpa playing toss with Beck.

James made pirate swords for the kids, as well as pirate hats. Oh boy did they love that. They were running around pretending to be pirates all day after that. At one point, Beck hopped on the bed that Grandma and Grandpa were sleeping on and shouted to Ainsley, "Ains! I found us a clever ship!" Oh those clever ships...

And here's a blurry but still adorable pic of little Ains and her blue blue eyes.


Upon arriving home, I realized I did not take enough pictures of the adults or of the baby. I've got to get better about that. Doesn't help that no one wants their picture taken, though. Sigh. Well, it was a very merry Christmas.