Amy loves to help us with the dishes! She passes them to us so we can put them in the cupboard. She doesn't care if they're clean or dirty. :)
Boston came to visit and so the kids wanted to take this picture. We took several but this is the one with the most people looking! We went to Las Vegas for Thanksgiving. (We hardly took any pictures, I guess because we already had our hands full with three kids and a stroller everywhere we went!) We had a great time, of course! The kids were soooo good on this trip so, of course, that made it all the more fun! We drove the camper down, then stayed two nights at Circus Circus, and then took the scenic/camping route back home, through the middle of Nevada. While in Vegas we bought bus passes and spent a day touring the strip and then we spent the next day at the Adventure Dome (indoor carnival). As soon as Aaron saw that one of the carnival game prizes was a guitar, he was determined to win! And he did! He's so excited to have a guitar.
Yes, I realize that Halloween was over a month ago. . . I dressed up as a spider, Aaron was a silly, fat tourist, Amy was a clown, and Jessi was Miss Understood. Dan didn't dress up this year. We enjoyed the ward's trunk-or-treat and then went trick or treating around the neighborhood -- a traditional Halloween, simple and fun! Amy's makeup job was ruined before I even finished putting it on! She loved Halloween though, treats all evening long!
Here are some pictures to show a few things our family has been up to over the past two weeks. Amy was really excited about having pumpkins and kept trying to pick them up. We got the pumpkins from a guy with a pumpkin patch just a few blocks away from us. We walked there in the dark one night after dinner. It was a little tricky picking pumpkins in the pitch dark! We invited our neighbor friends, Nicholas and Marki, to carve pumpkins with us. Amy had the best time playing with the pumpkin guts! And yes, we forgot to take a picture of the finished products! They're outside rotting on our front sidewalk. We recently spent a night on the west side of Utah Lake. Dan challenged what we call "Rocky's Canyon" in the jeep while Amy, Jessi, and I did some hiking. (We bailed the jeep because it's kind of a scary trail!) This is what we call Rocky's Keyhole. It's very narrow. (We had named one of our previous jeeps Rocky, and we were in that jeep when we originally discovered this area. We like to make up our own names for memorable landmarks that we discover.) Aaron and Daniel spent most of their time riding around and getting muddy. We also spent some time on this trip target shooting, enjoying the campfire, and caking the jeep with mud. Once, Aaron was following us in the jeep on the little three wheeler. We went through a really muddy spot and he got splattered with mud, all over his face and everything! He learned to not follow so closely! And this is our budding computer techie. She loves this Tap & Type website.
Aaron's football schedule has also kept us really busy over the last two months, but unfortunately I never pulled the camera out for any pictures! They just finished their season this week. Dan and I are both sad and happy to see it end. It's fun to be at the games, but all the practices and games are very time consuming, lots of driving around, etc.
I'm just curious, what are your thoughts about the new vaccination? Up until a few days ago I was feeling like it wasn't really necessary and that people were making way too big of a deal about Swine Flu. However, being both a teacher and pregnant have made me rethink things. In the past week I've seen my school go from one reported case to having several classes where half of the students are absent. Faculty and staff are getting it too. I could not believe how quickly the virus spread in just one short week. I know that it's predicted that it will continue to spread rampantly for another 5 weeks or so before it peaks. That's a LOT of people getting sick.
I realize that MOST of those people are not in the hospital, but they're not having a good time either. Those that I have talked to are feeling really pretty extremely miserable. There's a lot of hype out there about the vaccine, how it came out so quickly, and how can we know how reliable it is. I guess I'm taking a leap of faith. It seems that if there is a possibility of avoiding the virus and having it spread through my family then it's worth it. I would hope that our federal government has done enough research with it to know that it's safe before passing out millions of free doses to its citizens.
So anyway, we just got back from the health department where the kids and I all got our free shot. The lines were out the door, and we had to wait for quite a while, but I'm pretty sure that we won't regret it! In the mean time, we'll continue washing our hands, disinfecting, eating wholesome foods, and getting plenty of rest so that we can stay healthy!
Yep, some people have heard the news, and some people haven't so I figured I might as well make it public knowledge, the test came out positive with two pink lines, and so Dan, Aaron, Jessica, Amy, and I are excited to announce that we're expecting a baby in May. You may think we're crazy (and sometimes we think so too), but we're actually really glad to be having the two babies close together.
We didn't get pictures because Amy destroyed the evidence, but of course we had to have a fun way to tell the kids. I printed out the message, "We are going to have another baby in May," and cut each word apart and taped them under the kids' dinner cups and plates. They noticed one of the words while drinking and then quickly found all the words except "baby" because it was under Amy's bowl suction-cupped to the table. At first they thought we were going somewhere in May, but when they saw the word "baby" they quickly put the message together. Of course, Aaron and Jessica are thrilled! They've already decided that now they'll each get to share a room with a baby, which is still funny to me that they would be so excited about that. They LOVE and ADORE Amy so I'm sure this new baby will also be very welcomed.
Amy is growing up. She loves to pretend things. She plays dishes and enjoys having her own frying pan and spatula to cook with. She also loves playing with baby dolls. She gives them kisses and feeds them bottles. We recently found a toy stroller at the thrift store for $2 and it's her favorite things to push around. She's a cute little mommy with her baby, cell phone, and purses! Still not walking on her own. She's just not interested, and that's okay with me!
I just made arrangements to attend the NAEYC (National Association for the Education of Young Children) annual conference in Washington D.C. next month. I'm really excited to be able to go! NAEYC is the biggest association that advocates quality and research-based education for young children, which, as a first grade teacher, I'm really interested in. Plus, for the past two years I've been helping BYU with a research project called SEEL (Systematic and Engaging Early Literacy) and they have been invited to present their research at the conference. I have spent hours upon hours working with this project in my classroom so it's really neat to know that other people around the whole country are interested in knowing what I've been doing in my own little classroom! Dianne, my kindergarten colleague is going with me, and Amy too, but she'll be staying at my parent's house while I attend the conference.
It's been awhile since we've gotten together with Grandma Jan (Dan's mom). The last two trips we had planned something came up at the last minute (weather or work, etc.) and so we were really glad that she was able to make it!
We celebrated her birthday while she was here. Here's the whole gang, including Daniel and John, Jan's boyfriend who also came. This was Amy and Grandma's first time to meet each other. They hit it off and had a great time together! We already miss you and can't wait to see you again!
Amy said her first official word yesterday. She says things like dada, mama, and baba all the time, but it seems so random that I'm not sure if she's connected the word with its meaning. But yesterday she went to town with Izzy. Izzy is our cat and Amy loves her! Her Izzy sounds more like Iz-uh. Izzy sleeps on our deck a lot and Amy likes to look at her through the glass door. Whenever we're near the door and she can see Izzy she gets all excited and starts saying Iz-uh, Iz-uh! If we're outside and I ask where's Izzy? Amy will respond by looking around and pointing at the cat. She's a fun little baby!
It's kind of hard to tell, but that's actually a huge smile, in the middle of a squeal of excitement. I am so proud of myself for grabbing the camera super fast and capturing this moment. Moments like this don't last long because the camera distracts her!
Plus a few pictures of Amy's pool. She loves it! Jessi likes to get in it too. She's in the background doing sidewalk chalk with her friend. I love simple summer days!
Here's a little clip of Amy crawling. I'm a little behind because Amy is already tired of crawling and is more interested in pulling herself up to tables, chairs, etc. and cruising around them. I haven't taken any video of that yet. But since most of my readers haven't seen her crawl, I thought I'd post the clip anyway!
We've recently gone on a couple of little hiking outings in our "back yard," the mountain just about 3 blocks east of us. We always take little breaks, which is when we pull the camera out. I think we have some pretty cute pictures! Everyone enjoying some candy sticks.I think this is the cutest picture of Aaron and Amy! Dan usually carries Amy, but she was on my shoulders for a few minutes. Our little rock eater! Yes, I let her put rocks and sticks in her mouth. How else is she going to learn that they aren't food?!! Playing in the stream.
A few weeks ago Amy threw up in her car seat so of course I took the seat cover off and put it in the laundry. Shortly after I needed to run to the store to grab something so I had to use the car seat without the cover. It looked a little silly, but she didn't seem to mind. I figure this has to be something that happens to every mom because it's not like you just have an extra seat cover around, right?
Boston came to visit and so the kids wanted to take this picture. We took several but this is the one with the most people looking!
We went to Las Vegas for Thanksgiving. (We hardly took any pictures, I guess because we already had our hands full with three kids and a stroller everywhere we went!) We had a great time, of course! The kids were soooo good on this trip so, of course, that made it all the more fun! We drove the camper down, then stayed two nights at Circus Circus, and then took the scenic/camping route back home, through the middle of Nevada. While in Vegas we bought bus passes and spent a day touring the strip and then we spent the next day at the Adventure Dome (indoor carnival). As soon as Aaron saw that one of the carnival game prizes was a guitar, he was determined to win! And he did! He's so excited to have a guitar.
