Festive Days

Our Christmas was very merry and bright. We had our own little Christmas morning a few days early and then flew to Monterey to be with the Bennions for a week. It was days filled with games, crafts (the girls mostly), chocolate, yummy meals and more chocolate. Claire loved her first Christmas. It was so so very precious to see her giggle and hug her new stuffed animals and dolls and instantly want to play with every new toy she opened. It was very fun to get to play Santa for the first time for your own child! It also caused us to realize that our family Christmas morning traditions differ a little. No biggie, we'll compromise on how Santa displays and wraps (or doesn't wrap) his gifts :) Highlight for me - Kindle Fire for my reading and browsing pleasure and for Christian - hang gliding gift certificate!! He's been dreaming about hang gliding (and flying in general) for ages so it was so fun to see his surprise :) But most importantly, this week allowed us to let the blessing of family, which is centered around our Savior, sink into our hearts. 

 My favorite homemade gift for my bro Matt. Inspiration here.

 Our living room's festive touches

Are all these things for me?!

 The daughter of a dentist needs to start early.

 Hugging her baby

Kissing her baby

Ball from Grandpa Raleigh 

 Kissing (or eating) the head of the baby from Grandma and Grandpa Raleigh

 This pic is for my dad: Thanks for the S&P shakers!

Claire had a little bit of a hard time with all the big boys at Gammy and Pop's place. Lots of new people, places, and things caused her to get a little clingy . She is demonstrating her happy but worried face here. However it wasn't anything seeing their doggy Jens couldn't fix! It looks like doggy is her first word - sounds like either dee, gee, or da. Well, maybe not a full word, but she would point to the back door excitedly and babble her words whenever we'd ask where the doggy was.

The traditional Christmas Eve dinner at the Bennions. Thanks for the lovely week and gifts and love Dave and Lorraine. We love you!

And of course things weren't complete without video chats with my fam in Utah. My bro David is getting home from his mission in April so I will get to spend some quality time with them all soon.

Merry Christmas and Happy 2012!

Playing catch-up

Thanksgiving with the fam was sweet. It was so fun to have them stay with us in our new house. We hiked, ate Thanksgiving Day with cousins in Gilbert, and just enjoyed each other's company for their short visit.

The horrors of Santa

So life has been crazy but I wanted to post a quick update:

Claire's first Christmas is here and it's a terrifying one. Thankfully, she'll forget all about scary Santa once she opens up her awesome Christmas and then birthday presents! Lots of fun things ahead.

ch-ch-ch changes

Our baby keeps changing and getting bigger as evident by the following cell-phone snapshots:

She now holds on to furniture and adult legs with solid footing and steady balance. She moves back and forth and along these ledges and crawls like a mad woman. Now she just needs the courage to stay standing when she lets go and move those little feet! No rush though, she moves enough as it is right now. She claps, kind of points, and likes to turn the pages and lift the flaps of the books we read. She is sweet and quiet and has the cutest shy smile when new people talk to her. She likes to snuggle her teddy bear when she goes to sleep and snuggles with mom and dad too. We love this sweetie!

Other changes include the fact that we moved into a house! We love it and feel very blessed and at home - this is where we're supposed to be. Here's some shots of the house without us moved in. My decorating projects are coming together and I'll show some pics once we're more settled in. 

More pics to come!

Getting better

Last week was a sickly one for us. Claire demonstrated a whole range of symptoms - on and off again fever, decreased appetite, constipation, weird rash on her face - all on different days. Thankfully she never was too uncomfortable and almost each symptom was resolved within 24 hours of first appearing. Of course Christian and I weren't spared and suffered lovely food-poisoning-like illness the night after enjoying our military discount at Olive Garden on Veteran's Day. Dang, I hope my appetite for that place comes back eventually :( Well, Sunday after our icky week we decided to heal in the sun and explore Thunderbird Park which is close by. We hiked and enjoyed the 75 degree, blue sky and sunshine of November (ah, heaven). It was just what we needed.

 View from the top of the "mountain" as they call it.

 I told Christian to get close enough so it looked like she was going to touch it. Ha, thankfully she didn't get poked.

Busy Bees

So last year on my birthday my mom gave me a baby bumblebee costume for next year. Even though it seemed so far away, it's here and we got to dress up our little 9 mo. old bumblebee! Dad and mom of course were her beekeepers :) Also on this birthday weekend Christian took me out to breakfast to "The Good Egg" for some delicious omelettes and pumpkin pancakes. Oh wow it was good.

Unfortunately our little bee was an angry bee. Good thing we had on our gear so she wouldn't sting us.

The angry bee was calmed by some sugar and also by taking off her fleece costume in the 85 degree weather.

And boy does she like that sugar. She's practically inhaling the sucker we gave her.

Five thoughts

Five random things on my mind...ready, go:

1. Quinoa is a delicious and very nutritious filler for all types of meals. Not a grain, more like a seed (but soft when you cook it). Eat it as warm, oatmeal-like breakfast food or with beans and mexican seasonings for a burrito or even dessert. Check out these recipes. We made this the other day served over tilapia:

 Double yum (and very healthy, but don't tell Christian :)

2.  The government of North Korea is very evil. I had no idea the extent to their people's brainwashing until I saw these documentaries: Kimjongilia (watch the trailer here or the whole thing on YouTube), National Geographic: Inside North Korea (watch the whole thing on YouTube here) and A State of Mind. I saw them all originally streaming on Netflix but you can watch them in installments in the links above. Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung are their eternal leaders and gods. The people of this county can have no religion, literally no access to the outside world and from children they are taught to hate us "imperialist" Americans. Prison camps are crucial to their economy and people are put in these camps for things like placing a newspaper picture of their dear leader on the ground or for merely being the grandchild of someone who committed a "crime" because you must "purge three generations". Yes, these Hitler-like conditions still exist in the world. It is very disturbing to say the least. Satan is reigning his terror in that land and the poor people are innocent...and starving. I hope in my lifetime we can see those people unveiled from the lies that are ingrained into them. I hope they can taste freedom and desire it for themselves (and of course avoid nuclear warfare in the process).

3. I love my sisters. It is so fun to see them dating and experiencing the joys and challenges of life (which often create flashbacks to my own past). The challenges aren't fun per se, but seeing them overcome and learn from them is joyful to me. And I can't forget my brothers: handsome Dave perfecting his spiritual nature and bringing souls unto Christ in Mexico, and handsome Dan who does so well in school and pushes himself physically in football and tennis. And of course Matt, that little blondie full of energy. It's so sweet to see him love Claire and I'm excited for the relationship they'll have only being five years apart.

4. I have no discipline to go to bed. Even if I'm tired it's like I desperately try to waste time so the day won't end. Maybe it also stems from the fact I used to be afraid of walking in my sleep. Or that I used to not be able to sleep in high school because I was stressed about a cross country meet or a stupid math test. I guess I have some issues, but now I sleep just fine - it's the deciding to go to bed part that's hard.

5. It's difficult to face the truth about ourselves but if we do so, that temporary pain can lead to eternal freedom. For book club we read "Bonds That Make Us Free" land it's very thought-provoking - even life changing if you let it. To me it's a "how-to" on how to become more charitable, let go of pride, etc. Of course we can pray about it and tell ourselves we're gonna change, but we're often caught in cycles and trenches that we truthfully don't know how to get out of. First take-home point: When we feel we're the victim it's because we're allowing ourselves to be the victim. How do we react when we fail to do what we know is right? We justify and rationalize our actions. We hurry on past the lady who dropped her stuff in the store because we're in a hurry, right? She may think we're annoying, right? Or when our spouse has a lot to do and we leave the crying child to them. We take care of the baby all the time - they never help anyway. We're betraying ourselves and blaming others for our negative emotions.

Second take-home point: "To the immature, other people are not real". Remember when we were younger and our parents and teachers weren't real people? They were there to take care of our needs and our actions didn't affect them. Remember when you first began to understand that your parents had feelings? That they were real people with flaws and emotions too? It's a interesting paradigm to shift into but it's crucial in being able to love others. That cursing lady screaming at her kids at Wal-Mart shifts from an evil person (why do people like that have kids?) to a real person with inner-anguish, maybe abuse, and a lack of knowledge about love and life because she's never had it. When we can see every person as glorious spirit beings, children of our Heavenly Father, it helps us treat others with more charity and love and less judgement. It's the how-to of the principles we know are right.

Deep stuff. It's gonna take awhile to process all of it and hopefully integrate it into my own life. Whew. That's all. Next up, Halloween!

White Coat Ceremony

It's official. Christian now has the revered white coat. According to the school president's speech, whenever he lacks motivation, all he needs to do is put on the coat, look in the mirror, and he will have the strength to continue :) Ha, I will definitely be teasing him about that one. It was like a huge graduation after their two months of hard work :) We definitely are proud of him though. Seeing him in that coat reminds us of why we've worked so hard to get where we are and why we will continue to work over the next four years and beyond.

After we saw him coated Claire and I hung out in the lobby. "Let me outta here!"

                  

My little running buddy 

And I talk about it a lot, but I can't get over the perfect sphere of fuzziness on her head. It's supernatural.

Well, it's the middle (actually almost the end - wowza) of October and 96 degrees outside. I will be 25 in a week - that's likely over a quarter of my life gone. Life really is short. Christian continues to excel in his teeth carving, and learning about lots of gross-looking diseases. Life is great and we're looking forward to the holidays which are gonna be here before we know it.