To Get You in the Proper Spirit....

It's Christmas Eve!! We are safely in California, and pretty psyked for the rest of this week. So thought I would help everyone get in the proper spirit by re-posting a lovely rendition of "O Holy Night".

Click Click Click!

Adventures in Christmas Spirit

It has been snowing here pretty much non-stop the whole week, with temperatures around 15. The weatherman says that this is going to keep on keepin' on for the foreseeable future. Sure it's "Christmas Weather", and all that, but up until today I was pretty displeased. Today, however, brought a surprise of epic proportions right outside our bedroom window:



WE HAVE A SNOWCONE BUSH. Right outside our bedroom window.

Next on the the agenda, I have been making assorted Christmas goodies for the past two days (for cookie plates), and I just have a couple things to share with you.

1. Gelatin is flammable. That's all I have to say about that.

2. Don't feed your dog tiny malformed leftover sugar cookies. You will spend the rest of your day seeing this two inches from your face:



Third of all, according to babycenter.com my baby will someday be a circus acrobat.



Babycenter also says our baby is having a "sensory explosion" this week, which doesn't sound healthy to me, but apparently that's a good thing. Not much else is going on, but every website keeps reiterating "Your baby can hear yoooou! Talk to it! Even if you're just telling him your grocery list!" Now, I have no problem talking or singing to my baby in my home, but if I'm walking down the produce isle in Broulims, I'm not going to pick up a large mango, look at my belly, and say "HEY BABY! Look at this Mango! This is how big you are this week!!"

Pregnancy food.

Why do I ALWAYS want to eat Hawaiian pizza? Before I got pregnant, I didn't feel like pineapple belonged on pizza. Now it seems like the best idea ever.

And what is with the pistachios and ham, too? These are the only three foods that have yet to offend me in pregnancy. I mean, they are great foods and all, but why THOSE three?

I'm just saying. Vegetables are great foods too, and I would feel a lot better about eating those, rather than Hawaiian pizza. Why don't I always want to eat those?

Weird Dreams... again.

So lately, Trevor and I have had some weird dreams about religious persecution. I can only assume that these dreams come from a mixture of lack of sleep, pregnancy hormones (on my part), and that weird part of our brains that comes up with these things. You know, that part that produced dreams about my mom's station wagon kidnapping me, and dreams about giving birth to a zucchini which my doctor insists I take home and breastfeed.

Anyway, I had a dream the other night where I was responsible for removing all the LDS women from the Yuba City Stake Center without getting them burned to death by the angry mob. Why were they angry? I don’t know. Maybe it was leftover anger from practicing polygamy nearly 120 years ago. Maybe they were just mad at us for producing mass quantities of delicious funeral potatoes. There was no dream explanation for my dream mob. Anyway, the mob was momentarily held at bay by parking blocks. The angry people and their torches could not get past the 4 foot parking blocks (I don’t know why they had torches, either. It was daytime). As I was frantically searching for a way to get us all out of there, a woman came up to me and said “Psst! Do you know about the secret tunnel? It leads from the bathrooms in here to the bathrooms by the baseball field.”

“Brilliant!” I thought. And then I remembered that the baseball field bathrooms are only about 12 feet away from the actual church building, and still within the protected grounds. Useless! I went back to thinking of ways to get out of there. I finally decided that the best way out was to disguise ourselves as the Sikh Parade. Unfortunately we had no props or costumes, so we would just have to rely on our acting skills. I stood up in front of everyone and explained the plan, ending with “So we’ll all just have to act really Sikh! Don’t act Mormon!” The plan was greeted by cheers, and an immediate scurry to organize.

That was where my dream ended. The weirdest thing was that I woke up still feeling really oppressed. Like nobody liked me, and I wasn’t allowed to be LDS anymore. I like being LDS. You guys still like me, right?

And so it begins.

I am DEFINITELY feeling the baby move. I know it's supposedly "early" for a first time mother, but I honestly don't know how I could mistake some of these movements for anything else. Most of them are little, kind of like a goldfish swimming around, or like popcorn popping (maybe the baby has a good supply of Jiffy Pop in my uterus?) But yesterday, as I was driving home from Idaho Falls, I distinctly felt two little feet kicking into my left side. Feet, people, FEET!!

It is simultaneously the coolest and weirdest thing I've ever experienced. Yes, it's weird. Really weird. When you can finally feel a tiny little living creature MOVING inside of you, it's kinda creepy. Certainly amazing, and wonderful to have that connection with my baby, but still weird.

One more thing about feeling the baby move: yesterday, during that significant "Holy cow, that was a foot" moment, I realized that for the first time, it hurt. Not a ton, but it wasn't pleasant. What's with that? My baby weighs under a pound. How much force could she be putting behind those kicks?

Okay. So what else is baby up to this week? Turning cartilage into bones, gaining weight, and listening to mommy sing Christmas Carols! Cool, eh?

"Oh Tom the toad, oh Tom the toad! Why did you jump into the road? "

"... You used to beee so green and fat! Now you arrrree so red and flat! Oh Tom the toad, oh Tom the toad! Why did you jump into the road?"

Some childhood habits die hard.

We decorated the Christmas tree last night! It was a blast! We put in our Trans-Siberian Orchestra DVD, strung popcorn and cranberries, and generally had Christmas spirit. Take a look!

Yes. There is no star on the top of our tree. Or any other sort of tree topper. We cut down our Christmas tree in the mountains this year with a few other families, and while that was really fun... we cut the tree a little tall. What you see here is after Trevor cut about 2 feet off the bottom. Our tree is exactly 8 feet tall, the same height as our ceiling... so there was no room for any tree topper. Maybe our next house will have 12 foot ceilings, and we can have our 10 foot tree with a 2 foot star topper!

Holly's homecoming!

Holly came home from her mission at the beginning of November, and I got to be there to welcome her home! We had a fun little rehabilitation week :) We made sugar cookies, and bought stuff for a Christmas box for Glenn. We also got to see Beth and Sharla and their collective kids! We are SO GLAD to have Holly back!

Late Late Halloween Post!

I just realized that I never posted the pictures of our Jack-o-Lanterns!

Trevor's (It's Strongbad of homestarrunner.com fame)

Michelle's pumpkin (Home Star of homestarrunner.com)

Trevor's homage to my morning sickness.