It's a...

Girl! We are very excited. :) So far she looks similar to the other two little people running around here, and I'll get really mixed up. That will be fun though. ;)

Christmas Cards

I love to get Christmas cards. It's so nice to know that someone was thinking of you, and took the time to send you a note at Christmas to tell you.

So why can't I ever get them sent out to people myself?? Something comes up every year.... At the end of this November, I pulled a tendon (or something like that) behind my knee and couldn't walk for a week. (I did this buy locking my knees whilst I did dishes for too long. The joys of pregnancy!). Last year I don't think my excuse was as good......but still, the card thing just didn't happen.

So here is a Christmas blog-card to all of you nice readers of this blog. We hope you are having a Merry Christmas season and the the Light of Christ is touching your hearts.

If you don't celebrate Christmas, we hope the same for you, but also that you are enjoying what holiday you do celebrate this time of year.

Antlions vs. Lester update

I sure hope they all made it to higher ground. This is the bridge in Rockville Meridy and I were playing under with the antlions.

Soft Rock Stars

First of all. Isn't soft rock an oxymoron? If a rock is soft, shouldn't it be classified as sediment? What geologist out there can give me a good definition of "rock" that would include anything soft? I'm waiting, because I know I'm wrong. I just want to see the explanation.

Secondly, I just realized last night that Meridy and I are like rock stars. Well, except that we don't usually perform rock songs. We haven't done a rock song since "Wanted Dead or Alive" with Zach and Dad (Shella, were you singing too?) at the big Pope Family Reunion show. This realization came to me after I had finished singing "Far Far Away on Judea's Plains" in the ward Christmas program. William was having a hard time seeing me in Shepherd garb, so I started wondering what our kids think about all the performances we've been doing. We did our smash hit cover of "If I Had $1,000,000" (Christmas edition) at Hurricane's Festival of Trees earlier in the week. Meridy also performed a couple numbers with the Reeve Family Band at that event. She's been doing flute numbers in primary, sacrament meetings and a funeral in recent weeks. For example, she'll be playing a flute number for the ward choir today.

So yah, we're practically soft rock stars.

Merry Christmas everybody!!

Paparazzi Open House

I am having a Paparazzi Open House. It's a jewelry and hair accessory party at my house this Friday from 2-4pm!! No sales pitch, just come and see all of the cute items for sale. Your kids can come play upstairs if you need to bring them, so please don't let that stop you from coming. If I didn't get an invite out to you, please know that you are invited. If you need my address please leave me a comment. Hope you can come!

Great Christmas gifts for: moms, daughters, friends, piano teachers, and any other woman you can think of. Tons of items for only $5!

Baked Apples

I'm finally starting to come to terms with something that I have felt bad for for a long time: I don't like to bake. There I said it. Even if it is in small print. I'm finally realizing that it's okay to not like to bake and own it.

I think the greatest source of guilt comes from the fact that my mom is a fabulous baker. I grew up loving the holidays, to a major extent, because of the goodies my mom would bake. She would turn on the Christmas music and start baking. She gives many of her goodies away, but there's always a little left over for the kids. :) So many of our family traditions are centered around special food, and I can't always duplicate it, and my kids are missing out! Perhaps I need more practice, but I'm too impatient to practice.

Cheryl is a fabulous baker also. She makes some of the best rolls in the world, and she bakes them quite often. Then she turns some of the dough into cinnamon rolls. I love cinnamon rolls....

I hate baking because it makes a huge mess, and then I'm hardly ever satisfied with what I just made, and then I end up eating most of it, because I went to all the effort, and someone better eat it!!!! Then you gain weight on something that wasn't all that tasty anyway. To be fair, my kids and husband will eat what I bake and like it pretty well, but I somehow end up eating too much of it even though it's not up to snuff.

So finally to the owning it part. I have decided that I will bake things that are easy to bake! Like those delicious three ingredient chocolate chip pumpkin cookies. Those are easy and tasty enough to be worth the effort. And like baked apples. I just tried these making these recently. So easy and so good, like apple pie, without worrying about a crust. All you have to do is:

Core some apples. (The only really tricky part is not piercing the bottom)

Peel away a little peel around the well you created.

Fill them with a mixture of brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, chopped pecans, and cornstarch (for thickness).

Top with a dab of butter. (I forgot this part and they still turned out well).

Get the sized baking dish needed for number of apples. Fill the bottom with just enough water to cover. Place apples in pan. Bake at 350 for 30min give or take depending on size and hardness of apples. (Mine were small and took 30 min).
Top with vanilla ice cream and enjoy warm!

Unfortunately, my kids didn't totally go for this recipe, so I need more EASY and LOW mess baking recipes that taste a little better than out of the box. Do you guys know any????

And do you guys have holiday traditions that don't center around food? I know my family does have some, but I want more ideas. We need to start some personal family holiday traditions!

Nate's Birthday

Happy Birthday Nate! We had a good time celebrating Nate's birthday. These are pictures from a quick little party we had at home. We just had ice cream with candles, and the kids and I went shopping for Martinelli's, fancy cheese, and crackers for a "present". Nate already knew I was going to get it for him so that we could use it in a fancy dinner at home with no kids. (Thanks for watching them Angie!) I loved how he hammed up the photos anyway. The kids had a good time.

Below is a photo of our fancy cheese, crackers, apples, and Martinelli's for the first course of our fancy dinner.

Halloween 2010 (Updated)

First of all thanks so much for all your well wishes, and happy thoughts. We are very excited about our newest little surprise coming in May. Today I bought my first little baby item for our new one. I have lots of hand-me-downs from my previous two that this baby can use, but it's always fun to have a few things of your own--you know? So this is what I bought yesterday:

If the baby is a boy I can keep it just how it is. If the baby is a girl I am going to find some really cute ribbon and make some little bows to put on all the bats. :)





So anyway.....we did have a fun Halloween. We missed the ward party in the end, which made me sad, but we went to my mom's house and had a good time. Here are two pages I have finished: (I have had way too much fun scrapbooking on my computer since it came back from the computer ER doctor, Garry. He is AMAZING. Other people talk about their children's pediatricians, I talk about my computer's techie.)

{An UltraSound} Picture Says a Thousand Words

Well, actually no, an ultrasound doesn't. Don't we all wish it did? Too bad we need a professional to interpret what each little fuzz ball is and which way is even up. Fortunately for us, as average citizens, we're still pretty smart and the ultrasound to the left gives us a rough idea of what will be coming to Merinate around the 16th of May.


{The labels in orange are what I remember of the professional interpretation given for my ultrasound.}

Boys are different from Girls

These are some old baby pictures I found of Ellie at her Aunt and Uncle's wedding when she was five months old. She still has that "new baby" look--she looks like she's still trying to get used to the world. She has those dainty little baby girl hands. She's wearing a bow! She is wearing a beautiful bright pink, homemade dress. Very innocent. (But, she wasn't very innocent I assure you. She kept me up half the night at age five months. )

I have some really cute pictures of Will in a Baby Tux when he was only a month or two old. I wish I had them on this computer. Maybe I will have to edit this post later...
He looked handsome. Even though he had baby hands, they didn't look "dainty." He was not wearing a bow, but a bow tie instead. He looked innocent then too. He wasn't so innocent a few days ago.....

Now, Ellie is by no means a perfect child, and William is a good little boy. But William does things the likes of which Ellie has never dreamed of or would be too afraid to attempt....

Two days ago William out did himself. In one day, he:

1. Put gobs of toilet paper in the toilet after going potty, and held down the flusher. Water was all over the floor. I only found out about this because I went in to check on him. When I found him he was content to stand there holding down the flusher watching the water overflow. He could have stood there for who knows how long without thinking to tell me.

2. Ripped keys off the computer key board. He's done this before. He's already been in trouble for it. Once he ripped off nearly the entire keyboard. Obviously he thought he would try his luck again. The letter "s" is still missing.

3. Took off his clothes and ran around naked outside. I don't know why.

4. Wouldn't get into his car seat when I said now, I told him that I wouldn't give him any candy next time he asked. I gave him about three seconds to learn the meaning of the word 'now'. It didn't work so I shoved put him gently into his seat, and told him that when I say now, I mean now. Then he asked, "Can I have some candy?" I said, "no." He started to bawl. "Can I have some candy?" "NO." More bawling. It was the only thing I could do to upset him all day. Nothing else made a dent. Now a few days later, every time he gets in his car seat he asks, "Can I have some candy now?"

5. Gave me a scare by nearly ruining the computer, by nearly spilling root beer on it it. He knows he can't have food or drink by the computer.

Add to this the normal, everyday messes, and little sadnesses that come in the day of a three year old. Every time I turned around there was another or near disaster. Yes, boys are different from girls.