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.

finished products and a tutorial

Like I mentioned last post, I've been gettin' crafty lately. First of all, after being inspired by these monograms, I decided to start my own collection:

For the mossy B I started with a tutorial found through Pinterest but it included buying foam (that stuff is pricier than I thought) and using a projector (where am I gonna find one of those? Steal one from the elementary school or church library?) to trace your own shape etc. So, I ended up buying a $1.50 solid paperboard letter at Hobby Lobby and some sheet moss. I traced around the letter on the moss with a razor and then hot-glued. Looks pretty don't ya think? The blue one is a .50 cent styrofoam letter painted with acrylic paint and the gold one was at Hobby Lobby too.

My next project started with inspiration found here. Thumbtack covered foam balls which are then painted. However, one pack of  100 tacks didn't even cover one medium sized ball! Hmmm, time to problem-solve. I decided to just paint the rest with acrylic paint and then cover a couple with a fun fabric I recently found as a remnant at Joann's. I briefly looked online for how to cover a sphere with fabric, and improvised from a couple patterns I found. Want to make your own? 

(Note the baby hand on the right part of the picture. Yes, these are very attractive objects to little people. However, I will be a mean mom and keep these fun-looking items barely out of reach).

First measure your ball from the middle of the top to the middle of the bottom. Mine was about 11 cm.

 

Then make a leaf-shaped template (mine was cut out of cardstock) as long as your ball was. The width of the shape I didn't worry about at all - I just kept it symmetrical. I just winged it and it worked out. If you want to be more technical, it's maybe 3-4 cm across. It was wide enough to barely (just barely) cover the medium-sized ball with seven pieces, so you may want to make it a little wider. I guess it all depends on the size of what you're trying to cover.

Then cut out your fabric pieces using your pattern and glue (I used fabric glue) to the ball, making sure to line up your pieces if you are using a pattern. It's not perfect, but if keep your fabric in line after you cut it out and glue it in the same order, you can keep the general pattern going.

 Ta-da! And again there's baby, dying to play with those cool toys

And now the reveal of my favorite (but most time-consuming) project:

Yay! $5.00 matching end tables (yes, there's two of them) from DI. Some sanding, primer, a couple cans of Rustoleum Heirloom White spray paint, and some light distressing and you get this. Far from perfect, but when you distress it anyway, who cares, right? The hardware is the original, just without the ugly ornate piece that went around the knob.

Our "fall-wall". The extent of our fall/halloween decorations, but since we're so young in our marriage I have no doubt the decorations will accumulate over the years, so I'm trying to be patient. I think it's fun to have a little area you can keep decorated based on the season without worrying about trying to get the whole house coordinated each new holiday. And btw, the bats on the wreath were made by searching for "bat silhouettes" in google images and then taping a piece of white paper to the screen and lightly tracing, then using that as your pattern. My SIL Laura and I figured out how to do that for Sarah's wedding cake toppers and for easier shapes it sure is cheaper than one of the fancy cutting machines. There are a bazillion cool silhouette shapes out there, try taking some black construction paper and making your own. I have in mind another little project using embroidery hoops and linen-type material to back these birds:

Okay, that's enough craftiness for one day (see what Pinterest and decorating blogs do to you??) I think I'm gonna take a break and catch up on my book club reads.