Have I Ever Mentioned How Much I Love My Husband?

Tickle Monster

Why am I So Happy Today?

Could it be because this is my last day at work for about three months? I think that could be it.

I was supposed to work through the end of next week, giving me just one week off before my due date. I didn't really want to work that long, but due to monetary concerns, I needed to limit the amount of time I was on disaibility. Well, one of my bosses made an extremely generous PTO donation earlier this week, giving me the ability to leave earlier. And since I have carpal tunnel and every day my ankles and feet swell to the size of Texas and since my back hurts and since our house is not at all ready for the baby, I am outta here! I feel a little guilty about leaving, but not that much. :)

Which is good, because I have been feeling plenty guilty about a million other things lately. I am an emotional wreck. I am hoping it's just the pregnancy and I will return to normal shortly after having the baby. We'll see.

But right now, I do not feel bad. I feel happy, happy, happy. Because I am free. And I get to spend time with my children and husband during the day. And because now I might actually be ready to bring my new baby home. And because lying on the couch and reading a book sounds delightful to me right now. Happy, happy, happy!

We Did Have Christmas in 2008 . . .

I just never blogged about it. Christmas was great. We spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day here and then packed up the car on December 26 and headed to Arizona to visit my side of the family.

Notes on Christmas:

Alek was super excited about every present, even the one I got at the dollar store. That is one of the many reasons Alek is awesome. It was great having Alek with us this year, since he spent both Christmas Eve and Christmas day with his dad last year. Of course, that means he won't be with us again in 2009. But I try not think about it.

Katie understood Christmas this year. She helped decorate the tree and make cookies and was way excited about presents and her stocking and all the lights and decorations. Pretty fun.

Charlie does not understand Christmas. He was also very tired on Christmas morning. He attempted to help open one gift. Then he was just pretty much irritated and wanted to lay on the floor and drink milk.

I love my family. I miss them terribly. Being with them for a week was incredible. Only thing that would have made it better is if Jen and her family would have been there. I tried not to cry when I said goodbye to everyone, but I couldn't help it. I cried especially hard when I said goodbye to my mommy. She's amazing. And I felt like I barely spent any time with her at all. I'm looking forward to her coming to visit me.

So here are some pictures, long overdue.

I made Josh take pictures of my table on Christmas Eve. I was so impressed with myself for having non-every day plates, etc. to use and actually using them. Of course, my non-every day stuff is from Ross and Big Lots, so maybe I should be less impressed. We had Mexican food for Christmas Eve dinner, naturally. It was pretty good, but I'm going to have to make a wider variety of dishes next year.


After a reading of Luke 2, including hymns sung in between verses and mommy singing "Mary's Lullaby" at the end, and after reading How the Grinch Stole Christmas, the kids all got to open one present -- their Christmas pajamas. So then we had to get the traditional picture in front of the tree. Doesn't Charlie look great in this picture?


Alek with his stocking. I'm not very good at coming up with stocking stuffer ideas. I have to say, stockings were pretty lame this year. But the kids didn't seem too disappointed.

Katie with her stocking. She loved getting candy. She is a candy fiend.


Charlie with his stocking. He was a little bit more interested in his presents. But not much. He was really very tired.


Josh with his Celtic Football Club scarf. He loved it.

So that was Christmas Eve and morning at our house. I'll have to post again soon with pictures from Christmas dinner and our Arizona trip.

A Great Moment in My Life

As many of you know, raising Charlie has just proved to be significantly different than raising my other two kids. He has just not developed the same way your "typical" child does. Josh and I still are not sure what this means, but we're working on figuring it out. One of the hardest things for me is that he does not express affection like my other two have and I have sometimes wondered if he even feels a connection to me at all.

Lately, Charlie has been making some strides, however. Tonight, he did something he has never, ever done before and it brought me a great amount of joy.

On my way into our house after work, Charlie stopped what he was doing, looked up at me, got a big old grin on his face, ran toward me with arms wide open and jumped into my arms. Words cannot express how happy it made me.

Guess Who Doesn't Have Gestational Diabetes?

Me. :) Hooray!

Not Really Rethinking the Name

In reference to my second post on January 28. I was just teasing. I thought the article was . . . uh, funny in that I think it overlooked much more obvious reasons why certain names might be more connected with crime than other names. I won't go into all those reasons here.

I know some people hate the baby's name. Some people have flat out told me that and others have told me they hate it by not saying anything about the name. I wish I could say it doesn't bother me, but it does. But I'm trying to take a page from Josh's book and not care, because the baby's name is what it is. I won't go into a long story about it here, but I just feel like this is what we are supposed to name the baby. And if 25 years from now, he's a homeless drifter or standing on top of a bell tower with an automatic rifle, hopefully no one will lay the blame on his name.

A Good Sunday

I had a good day today. I woke up feeling 100% better and knowing my illness was gone, gone, gone. Church was wonderful -- uplifting testimonies during Sacrament meeting, a good Gospel Doctrine lesson, a good YW lesson (the girls were really listening!), and I just felt the Spirit a lot.

While the little ones and Josh napped after church, Alek and I played Star Wars Trivial Pursuit and read a little bit of the second Fablehaven book. It was so nice to spend time with him by myself and just have fun. We haven't done that for a while. One of my personal goals is to carve out more time for Alek. He really needs it.

It was pretty quiet around the house today and there was a good spirit in our home. Our townhouse complex stopped offering free cable and no TV stations come in at all anymore. So far, I don't miss TV. We've been debating whether or not to get cable on our own. I think we'll do without for a while longer at least. Most of the TV shows we follow we can watch online and then we can avoid the terrible commercials (for the most part). So the only TV watching today was when I put in a Winnie the Pooh movie for the kids while I, get this, cleaned the kitchen and made dinner. Yes, I did! I was actually the mom today and I gave Josh a rest. It felt good. Katie helped me make the pancake batter (I never said I made a fancy dinner).

We read scriptures together as a family and said prayers and then Alek and I had a talk about his future (he wants to live on a farm; I'm sure he has not been at all influenced by his visit to the Peatross family last summer or the fact that they've been learning about agriculture in school this year) and how to prepare and the importance of spiritual preparation. Alek went to bed and we let the wee ones run around some more while Josh talked to his brother, Aaron, and I planned the menu for the next two weeks (yes, I did!) and came up with a list of about 50 main dishes for future menu planning.

As soon as Josh is finished talking to his bro, we're going to read some of the Doctrine and Covenants, which is what we're reading together this year.

So, all in all, a good day. A nice, calm, happy Sunday, which is all too rare. And I feel like I accomplished things today and made good choices and was a good mom. That's rare, too, feeling that way. Hope you all had a good Sunday, too.

I'm Way Behind on Blogging

So I'm going to post a bunch of pictures from ages ago. Enjoy.

The kids on Halloween 2008. Alek is Merlin, Katie is a medieval princess (but she wouldn't wear a crown) and Charlie is a bumblebee (but he wouldn't wear the hood).

Katie loved wearing Alek's wizard hat. This picture just cracks me up.

Alek in all his Merlin glory. His dad's friend made this costume and I think it turned out awesome. Alek was super excited about it.

In November, I had to leave my family for four days, so I could go work really hard in Beverly Hills. Hard work included eating out with friends, seeing Kevin from the Backstreet Boys, and going to a rock and roll themed party where the people I work with dressed up and acted like weirdos. Doesn't that sound like hard work? Actually, they were four long days and it was a lot of work, but who wants to see pictures of or hear about any of that stuff? Boring.

The Farm at Beverly Hills. If you're ever in Beverly Hills, I highly recommend it. The food was so good and not nearly as expensive as the swanky places in town. Plus, they have awesome sweet potato fries. This is the second night in a row I ate there -- this time with Michelle, Farrah and Ayme.

At the rock and roll party. The man on the left is the big boss where I work. Doesn't he look like a serious executive? He was pulling the funniest faces in every picture. He was cracking me up.

Me with Elvis, aka Dr. Campbell, the Speaker of the House. I know I look enormous, but I'm pregnant, so let's keep that in mind.

Last, but not least, we have the pictures from the holiday party we had at work back in December. This was the official holiday party, not to be confused with our ugly sweater party, which I posted about earlier. Helping with this party was my last official act as a member of the Events Planning Committee, since I decided to resign after just one year. I loved being on the committee, but I have too much on my plate and it was an easy thing to stop doing, compared to say, being a mom of several small children.

Anyway, the holiday party's theme was "Black and White at Midnight." We celebrated New Year's this year since Christmas is off limits and coming up with generic winter themes every year can be difficult. We asked everyone to wear all black and white and like 97% of the people actually did it. It was awesome. We had a countdown and black and white party favors and a lunch of heavy appetizers and mocktinis. It was a lot of fun. We put black plastic over all the windows and then cut little holes out of it so it looked like a starry night in the room. The members of the Events Planning Committee all wore at least a little bit of red so we would stand out in case anyone had any questions. The room turned out looking awesome and so elegant, I thought. Judge for yourself.

Main entrance to the party

The Events Planning Committee

One of the tall boy tables where people could stand and eat.

One of our two lounge areas. The faux brick is covering an enormous awards case. We decided that the nightclub in NYC where our party was taking place would definitely have exposed brick on one inside wall. :)

A second room where people could get away from some of the noise was just decorated with round tables like this. Farrah had the idea to make the table look like the face of a clock. I think it turned out really cool.

Some of our partygoers all decked out in their black and white.