There are just too many ...

In November I think between Martin's family and my family we have way too many birthdays this month. We have at least one, sometimes up to three birthdays per week during November.

I just want to wish George, my brother in law a happy birthday today. He hasn't been a huge part of our lives for the last few years, but he is back now and I've been getting to know him a lot better. He sure loves Ethan and it's fun to watch them together. Ethan now knows who he is when he comes over and gets really excited to see him.

Anyway, I'm glad you're back George. Stay out of trouble so you can stay home, and most of all:

Happy Birthday!

(Ethan and George like to play the Wii together)

Tag I'm It

This is what you do:

1. Open up your picture file

2. Go to the fourth folder

3. Select the fourth picture

4. Post the picture on your blog and write about it

This is me last halloween, feeling extremely huge but only part of the way there. Martin and I had decided to dress up for halloween, and I made us both costumes. I made Martin a penguin costume and me a pregnant bee costume. We went as the birds and the bees. :) It made me laugh everytime I thought about that and looked down at my belly.

Now it's your turn. If you want to show us your 4th picture in the 4th folder of your pictures file, I'd love to see it.

Also, today (well yesterday as in the 6th) was Martin's birthday! He had to work all day long and got home about 10:30 at night so we didn't get to spend the day together, but he took the entire day off tomorrow so that we can hang out! Happy Birthday Martin, I'm so glad you are part of my life. Thanks for all you do for Ethan and me. We love you so much.

(P.S. Thanks Traves for this awesome picture!)

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween! I love halloween, it is one of my favorite holidays. It's not quite as fun as it used to be when all the little kids around went trick or treating instead of the new trunk or treat ... Martin doesn't support trunk or treating at all. =D He's funny like that. I'm not a fan, we like the good old fashioned door to door fun instead. Well four years ago today I got engaged, and now I look back at everything that's happened since and it's pretty neat.

I have already posted Ethan's super cute turtle halloween costume, so I won't do that again even though it is halloween. Instead, I will show you another cute picture of him ... he's getting so big so fast. He is already 9 months. I can't believe it. What a sweet baby. He's so fun, and I'm so glad that I have him in my life.

I hope you all had a very happy halloween!

Good News

Monday Martin was offered a temp job working for a countertop company in Providence for the week. The way the owner made it sound without actually saying it was that he wanted Martin to go in and work with the people there and see how he does. We think he wanted to see if he could do everything he said he could do. I'm happy to announce that today the owner offered him a full time job there! (that's something big because there is only 1 other full time employee there, the rest are part time). I am so relieved. I got my house payment in the mail a few days ago and I didn't know what we were going to do.

In other news, today is my Grandma's birthday! Happy birthday Grandma! We love you.

Rough times

Last wednesday Martin was laid off from his job, and spent the rest of the week looking for something else. I am worried about what we are going to do if he can't find something soon. I have been trying to remain calm, but the more days that pass without a source of income and having a home, bills and an infant ... the more I start to panic. If anybody knows of anything, let me know.

Halloween

Ethan's halloween costume arrived in the mail today, and I just couldn't wait to post pictures of how cute it is on him!! He's the cutest little turtle I've ever seen. :)

After he was all dressed in it, he left the hat alone surprisingly. He really liked wearing it, and started to giggle and covered his face with his hands.

Body Worlds Exhibit

Today Martin went to work but was sent home at 8am because they didn't have anything for him to do. When he got home, he took care of Ethan for a couple of hours so I could sleep in a little longer and then made us breakfast. After breakfast we decided that we should drive to Salt Lake and take Ethan to the zoo to see the animals. We went and picked up our friend Traves and headed to Salt Lake. When we got there we had to make a stop at the London Market (always a must while in SLC) and then headed up to the zoo. When we got there we learned that the zoo would be closing in about 30 minutes so we bagged that idea. Instead we started driving around looking for something else to do, and saw advertisements for the Body Worlds Exhibit hosted by University Health Care. For those of you who don't know what it is, it is a display of real human bodies and organs, parts, etc ... showing you how the body works. Here are some pictures of some of the bodies they have on display in SLC:

It's a pretty neat thing to do at least once, as it's a traveling exhibit it won't be here for long. I think it is here until January. But if you get a chance to go, you should at least go check it out.

All in all it was a pretty fun day. It's fun to just get out and go somewhere once in a while.

My little monster

Ethan has offically taught himself how to crawl for real. He had been getting around everywhere by army crawling and seemed to have no problem with it. Lately he has been pulling himself up on everything in site and we were starting to think he would learn to walk before he could crawl.

Good job Ethan!

He also has gotten two more teeth making a grand total of four! Two top and two bottom. I have to admit, that week of the two teeth coming in was torture. He kept waking up every 2 hours just sobbing. I'm glad to have that behind me for now until more start to come in.

I have also given him another haircut. The hair on the very top of his head grows so fast, it was getting a little shaggy in the front. Now that it is short, I can spike it all up again!

I have also started teaching him sign language. I think this is such an awesome thing for an infant to know. How amazing is it when they can tell you exactly what they want before they can even speak? I need to learn more about it, but for now we are just starting out.

I have always wanted to learn sign language. In 7th grade I had a student teacher who was deaf and her interpreter sat right behind me and would show me signs everyday. My teacher would also start each lesson by teaching us something new to say. It was really neat. Whenever I have an interpreter in one of my classes, I would always pay more attention to them signing then I would to the teacher. Not a very good thing when I need to follow along. Anyway, I started teaching myself but it's a little tricky. One day I am going to take an actual sign language class. Until then, I will just have to keep teaching myself little by little.

Well that's it until next time. Have an awesome weekend.

Off for the weekend

Martin and I were invited to go to bear lake for the weekend with some friends. As we were heading out, it started snowing. Because it snowed it was obviously too cold to go to bear lake, but there wasn't enough snow to do snow activities either. We ended up just watching a lot of movies. That's okay with me, sometimes it's just fun to get away even if we don't do anything special. We did take Ethan to the swimming pool and he really liked that. He's a water baby. I can't wait to teach him how to swim.
We got back today and I am so excited to sleep in my own bed! Whenever I go anywhere, the thing I look forward to most is sleeping in my own bed. Ethan was so exhausted when we got home he took a 3 hour nap. I think he was glad to be home and away from all the people and the noise.
Anyway, here are some pictures from this weekend.

Here is Heidi and Ethan

Ethan really loves Sio, and Sio really love Ethan. In fact, when we were getting ready to leave this morning, Sio walked out the door with Ethan and Heidi and to tell him to take the baby back.

Ethan and his daddy

Look how menacing the lake looks. It looks freezing.

Starting out

Okay, okay, so I have a blog now. I found a really good idea on what to put as my first post. It’s what my cousin Lindsay did. Here is a list of 100 things about me. It is really long.

1. I am named after my Grandma, along with 4 other people in my family
2. I really love to cook
3. I love to try new foods when I am able to
4. I prefer tropical fruits to everyday fruits like apples and bananas. I would eat a pineapple or mango over an apple any day
5. I want to live in Oregon someday
6. I was born at home and lived in the same house for 21 years
7. I really, really love my dogs
8. I am a vegetarian and have been for 8 years (I think it's been 8 ...)
9. I miss my baby being tiny. He doesn't snuggle anymore. He's a wiggly worm
10. I love my baby to pieces, but I am really nervous to have another baby because I was sick the entire 9 months up until the day he was born. He had to come 3 weeks early because I got pre-eclampsia
11. I love that my husband loves his job and loves granite. You can see it in his face when he talks to people about it
12. I love staying home with my baby and watching him grow up
13. I love the look Ethan gets on his face when he sees Martin everyday when he gets home from work.
14. I love that Martin and Ethan are best friends
15. I love that Martin loves Ethan and wants to show him everything
16. I really like the color brown and the color green
17. I love my maple tree in the backyard. I love trees in general though, my favorite place to be is up in the mountains in the spring, summer and especially the fall.
18. I love leaves so much that when I was a little girl I went outside once and put all the leaves on the ground into a garbage bag and took it inside and dumped them all over my bedroom.
19. I love that I get to spend as much time with my Grandma as I do. She is mostly blind and needs help with lots of things and I get to help her and I love it.
20. I know it's cheesy, but I really love Disneyland. I don't get to go very often and Martin really doesn't like it that much ... so I enjoy it that much more when I am finally able to go.
21. I dress really boring because I don't have a lot to choose from, but I always try and make sure that Ethan looks cute.
22. I love when Ethan wears brown cords
23. I hope I will be the kind of Mom that my children will look up to someday.
24. I wish I had more time to throw pottery again
25. I also wish I had more time to paint
26. I really love my old house and fixing it up and making it my own
27. I really love musicals. I could watch some of my favorite ones over and over and over again.
28. I also really love the theater. If I lived near a Broadway theater I think I would have to get a season pass or whatever they would call it for the theater
29. I love the music to Wicked. I've never seen it but listen to the music over and
30. I love to listen to books on tape. Harry Potter is by far my favorite. I listen to all 7 books and as soon as they are over I start over again. I walk around my house cleaning and taking care of Ethan with my iPod headphones shoved in my ears. I also started listening to Twilight on CD as well. The narrator really bothered me at first, but now that I've listened to them all she doesn't bug me so much anymore.
31. I love spending time with Martin
32. I think it's so funny that Martin is colorblind. I used to play all sorts of jokes on him about it, but now I'm so used to it I forget about it until somebody brings it back to my attention.
33. I wish I could've met Martin's mom
34. I am glad that Martin and I dated for over 2 years before we got married. That's not the normal Utah thing. :)
35. If I ever have a baby girl, I am going to have a hard time picking between my favorite girl names. I really love the name Autumn Careen, but I also really love the name Jocelyn and Jade.
36. I think I have a mild case of O.C.D.
37. I really think my baby is the cutest thing I’ve ever seen
38. I’m extremely allergic to rodents, they make me break out in hives and not be able to breath. I used to have a lot of rats but I can’t have any ever again.
39. I love tomatoes out of the garden. They taste so much different than tomatoes out of the supermarket.
40. I don’t like the winter, at all
41. I only like to clean at night when everybody is sleeping. I try and clean during the day but it’s just too distracting.
42. It drives me crazy when complete strangers walk up to me in the store and just start talking to Ethan while touching his hands and feet and acting like they’ve known him forever and just walk off. The second you have a baby every baby loving person at the store becomes your best friend.
43. I prefer myself with dark hair, and usually short as well
44. I love camping. It probably goes along with loving to be up in the mountains as well.
45. I absolutely love taking photos.
46. When I order prints of the photos I’ve taken, I only like to order large prints. I don’t like small prints hanging on my walls. If I had the wall space, all the prints in my house would be 11 x 14 or larger.
47. I rarely get enough sleep so I’m tired all the time
48. I really don’t eat a lot of treats. I usually prefer a vegetable or bread and cheese instead.
49. I love specialty cheeses. Fresh mozzarella, gorgonzola, and fresh parmesan are some of my favorites. When I eat at one specific restaurant, I almost always order the porcini mushroom ravioli with gorgonzola cheese sauce. It’s awesome!
50. I feel bad when I lose my temper.
51. I love the Food Network Channel
52. I get ideas for dinner from everywhere. From watching the TV and walking up and down the isles at the grocery store. Sometimes I eat something good at a restaurant and I come home and try to make it but add some of my own stuff to it.
53. I can’t believe I am old enough to be a Mom.
54. I love watching my baby grow and celebrating his little accomplishments.
55. I love taking my dogs and Ethan to the park and throwing tennis balls for the dogs.
56. Martin and I bought Kya (my chocolate lab, the older dog) her own dog (Stella, my basset/healer mix, dumb as can be) a month before Ethan was born so she wouldn’t be so jealous. I love that they are friends now, it’s really cute to watch them play sometimes.
57. I really like that Ethan loves the dogs as much as he does and that the dogs love Ethan just as much. They always try and sneak giving him kisses when we aren’t looking and when they actually make it, Ethan get a huge grin on his face.
58. I love the TV shows House, Lost, CSI and Prison Break.
59. I think I’m addicted to the internet.
60. One day I will be able to tour Europe. I’ve been to England and Wales, but I didn’t really get to see as much as I would have liked to.
61. My birthday is late November and some years it falls on Thanksgiving and I really don’t like it at all.
62. I love fresh herbs, but can’t get them to grow in my house for the life of me.
63. One day I will have an enormous garden in my backyard so I can grow anything I like, and have my own separate herb garden.
64. When I was little, my mom fed me this nasty asparagus soup that was probably the most disgusting thing I had ever tasted. It made me afraid to ever taste asparagus ever again. Now that I am older I have tried fresh asparagus and it is now one of my favorite vegetables.
65. I really hate mayonnaise, and rarely use it for anything. I made fresh mayonnaise and seeing what is in it made me dislike it even more. But if we have to use mayonnaise for anything I’d prefer homemade fresh mayo to store bought full of who knows what mayo. Gross.
66. I love hamburgers (Boca burgers for me)
67. I used to really dislike taking baths, but while I was pregnant that was the only thing that made me feel better. I like them a little more now. I like them with really good scented bubbles (like ginger and white tea) and while reading a really good book. I think all my favorite books have water stains on some of the pages.
68. I absolutely love my nephews and my nieces. They are so stinkin’ cute. I used to say if my baby looked even half as cute as Garrett, I would have a really cute baby.
69. I really want to learn sign language. I started teaching myself, and one day I will take classes for it. I used to want to learn it because I always loved watching the interpreters in my classes, but now that I’m married, I could speak to Martin’s Aunt and Uncle who are deaf.
70. One of my favorite things is seeing Ethan get a huge grin on his face, and his eyes start twinkling.
71. I also love the little cute noises that he makes. (This of course excludes the not so cute noises that he also makes)
72. I am a primary teacher and scout leader with Martin, but I’m getting really tired of it. Our kids are crazy and out of control and I’d rather just be released and put somewhere else before we all go crazy.
73. I used to be a nursery leader with Martin when we were first married, and I dreaded that calling, but it turned out to be one of my favorites I’ve ever had. Those kids were so sweet and I loved hanging out with them for 2 hours every week.
74. I really like Pirates. In fact, we made Ethan’s bedroom Pirate theme instead of something that is usually put in a baby’s room. I also painted it brown, because I really like brown. I almost painted a tree on the wall for his own tree house but I decided to save that for his next room.
75. Once I locked myself out of my house while Ethan was inside alone and I panicked so much I accidentally broke my bedroom window while I was trying to get back in. I hope we can fix it. =)
76. When we moved to Richmond I didn’t think I would like living way out here, but now that I’ve lived here for 2 years I actually really like living far away from all the hustle and bustle of Logan.
77. I love being a stay at home mom, but sometimes I wish I could just get away for a few hours a week. That makes me feel guilty for wanting to be away from him, but I hope he knows how much I love him.
78. I love taking Ethan and the dogs to bear lake. They love playing in the water! Stella likes to dig in the sand and bury things.
79. Someday I want to be in the Young Women’s, like be an advisor or the camp leader.
80. I love to change my hair
81. I love hiking with Martin and my dogs
82. I also love using my grill. I cook on it all year long, not just in the summer.
83. I love that I’m married to Martin and I look forward to the rest of my life with him.
84. My favorite holiday is Halloween.
85. I love the way Ethan smells right after a bath
86. I really enjoy watching movies with Martin and just hanging out with each other
87. I love to read, and will read my favorite books over and over again
88. I probably have about 25 tubes of lotion, all different scents
89. I love when my entire family gets together at my Grandma’s house. I love seeing all of them
90. My family used to go on family reunions every year, and I really miss those. We would always go somewhere fun like the Oregon Coast, or the Redwoods.
91. I wish that Martin’s family would make more of an effort to get to know us and the baby
92. I love going to Salt Lake, even if it’s just for a few hours.
93. I love going to the airport. It is usually a place you go when you are going somewhere fun or somewhere you want to go. Sometimes when I have to go drop people off, I get a little emotional because they get to go somewhere fun and I am being left behind.
94. I love taking Martin to the London Market so he can get English chocolate. He always gets so excited. His mom and grandparents are from England so he grew up with everything there.
95. I love going to the London Market as well because it reminds me of when I went to England. One day I want to go back with Martin.
96. Since I’ve had a baby, my memory is completely shot. I used to be able to remember all sorts of things, now I have to rely on my calendar with notes written all over it.
97. I love taking Ethan and my dogs on walks
98. I don’t like answering or talking on the phone
99. I love my garden, but I hate weeding it and taking out all the dead plants when winter is about to hit.
100. And finally, I love my little family so much and I am so blessed to have them.

All right, now it’s your turn!