Difficult concepts

Our efforts to teach Elaina how to read have had mixed results. She can recognize certain words, but the whole concept of phonics hasn't sunk in yet. Heather tries, asking her things like "What starts with M?" Elaina's replies are sometimes correct, but usually not.

This morning we went to Krispy Kream for breakfast, and as we drove past Fred Meyer on the way home Elaina pointed and said "There's the grocery store! Tuh - tuh - tuh grocery store." We tried to explain that it's "Guh - guh - guh grocery store" but her reply was "Tuh - tuh grocery store." And a few days ago it was "Mmm - mmm - mmm princess."

In one of those free-associative things our minds do to link mostly unrelated memories, we were somehow reminded of a few months ago when, while singing "Jesus Wants me for a Sunbeam", she threw out the line "At home, at school, at shopping." Now that she has equated shopping with play, I'll definitely work hard to teach her about concepts like self-sufficiency, hard work, and scarcity. She'll probably be the only first grader at her school to understand downward-sloping demand curves.

They know what they're doing, and how much it's worth

So today we took our (roughly) annual trip to Kiddie Kandids - for the first weekend in about 2 months, the kids aren't sick and are looking pretty good. Elaina is still recovering from a basketball injury - she bumped her head taking a fall in the gym. The bruise is now a nickel-sized green spot on her forehead, but her bangs cover it up pretty well. Heather's been looking for a window of opportunity for a while, and declared that today was the day.

Admittedly, it's not my favorite day of the year, but I'm kind of resigned to the fact that this expense will appear in our annual budget. Also, KK is better at working with kids than JCPenney, Target, etc. And they definitely don't send out coupons in the blue Val-pak envelope. Cost matters aside, I doubt I'll ever be excited about the logistics of getting the kids all cleaned up and trying to keep them that way while hauling them and their nice portrait clothes to the local Babies-R-Us.

Camden was very happy during the shoot but wasn't flashing any characteristic big smiles - he was all grins and loud noises. He drew a lot of attention. Elaina has a cheesy "on-demand" smile that the photographer skillfully subdued with some silliness and threatened tickling. Below are two pictures that didn't make the final cut. We don't want to ruin the surprise for those who are getting prints in the mail soon. Witness Elaina's somewhat cheesy (but authentic) giggle look. And here's an example of Camden's general silliness, with the biggest smile we got from him during the sitting.

It's the most wonderful time of the year

One of the few (but awesome) highlights of this time of year is the many great TV shows that start up, and because of sweeps, they really make every effort to entertain! It's a little pathetic how much TV Torry and I have been watching. To help facilitate this pastime, we have been enabled by our TiVo. Seriously - how did people live before this wonderful invention? Word to the wise: don't get one unless you are willing to have a monthly payment for the rest of your life - it's like crack. One key benefit is that since you can skip commercials, we spend about 30% less time watching shows than we would otherwise. A lot of these shows are better (in our humble opinion) than many movies. Here are our favorites:

1. Lost (the best show EVER) It's a must to watch with friends - you almost need to discuss what is going on to understand it all. Went off the rails a bit in season 3, but has been solid since then.
2. 24 - this season is so good. We were a little worried, because the last two seasons were a little disappointing
3. House - Even though it's the same plot line in each episode, we still love it
4. Bones - It's fun and David Boreanaz is HOT
5. Life - Best police drama ever. Damien Lewis is amazing - funny, controlled, yet full of lethal rage. You won't believe how well you can see it in his eyes.
6. The Office - "Would I rather be feared or loved? Um... Easy, both. I want people to be afraid of how much they love me. "
7. Project Runway - Those people are so talented. Unfortunately we don't get Bravo right now.
8. American Idol - yeah, us and everyone else
9. True Beauty (our recent guilty pleasure)
10. The Mentalist - The leading man in this one is hot too. (Note from Torry: would it ruin it for Heather if I told her he plays a gay escort in L.A. Confidential?)
11. Psych - This one is always good for a laugh and probably my light favorite
12. Monk
13. Smallville

I often wonder what we could accomplish if we weren't spending so much time watching TV....

Cute Kids

Torry's sister, Stephanie, got married a couple days before Christmas. Unfortunatly, it was so cold and windy, we weren't able to get many pictures. But the kids looked so cute in these outside the temple, that I just had to post them.

Meeting Santa Claus

So, this year it's been really fun because it is the first year that Elaina "gets" Santa Claus. I asked her what she wanted Santa to bring her and she said "colors" - meaning the bath tablets you put in the bath water to color it. I thought that was a doable request. I asked her if she wanted to see Santa and she said "yes" Well, when we finally got to see him, she was so sacred, she looked like she was trying not to cry. Santa had to lure her close with a candy cane - and there was definetly no requesting of presents. Poor thing. I was reminded of "A Christmas Story" when he finally meets Santa. Maybe she'll be more brave next year. Camden sure liked him though.

Stephanie's Wedding Cake

So I found another outlet for my creativity. I really like the magnitude of the project of decorating a wedding cake - and there is something oddly satisfying that soon after you are done finishing this very expensive, very time consuming piece of art - you cut it up into a bunch of tiny pieces and people eat it. I don't think I have the energy to do this very often though - even with my mother-in-law baking the cake, and making the fondant and frosting in advance, it still took 13 hours the day before the wedding to decorate. Yeh - not - very - often. Still fun for once and awhile.

I've been tagged

I've never done a tag before because I have a hard time thinking of these kind of things, but I enjoy reading other people's lists so much, I thought I'd give it a shot. So here it is:

7 Things I plan to do before I die
1. Learn how to oil paint
2. Sing in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir
3. Tour Europe
4. Get all my pictures into a nice album with commentary
5. Have at least 4 kids
6. Eat something that costs over $100
7. Go on at least 2 missions with Torry

7 Things I can do:
1. Make fancy wedding cakes
2. Pick up things with my toes
3. Make, like, a 100 different kinds of soup
4. Survive a Chicago winter
5. Create desserts out of my head
6. Make Torry mad (trust me, it's hard)
7. Plug my nose with my lips

7 Things I cannot do:
1. Learn right and left (seriously - why can't I get it?)
2. Lead a well-balanced life (I tend to focus too much on one thing in a day - I'll get a lot of it done, but nothing else)
3. Wait (I'm terribly impatient)
4. Dive
5. Drive (with a stick) downtown Seattle without getting an anxiety attack (have you seen those hills?)
6. Program my oven to timed baking, so I'll quit burning things
7. Read enough to Elaina (we read for at least 1-2 hours a day, but she is always asking me. I am always feeling guilty when she asks and I have to say "Not now")

7 Things I would have on a deserted island:
1. Torry (Not only is he my best friend, he knows something about everything and would definitely come in handy)
2. ipod full of movies and music
3. solar ipod charger
4. my bed
5. fishing pole
6. salt (for all the fish I'll be catching)
7. matches

7 Things I say most often:
1. "Is that so?" (To Elaina)
2. "I Love you" (I'm afraid it's become a default when I don't know what else to say, although I always mean it)
3. "Just a sec" (Elaina is constantly asking me to do things while I am doing something - she hears that a lot)
4. "Hey" (It's how I answer the phone - polite, huh?)
5. "That's right" (I say it so much, Elaina says it all the time now)
6. "Good job!"
7. "I'm hungry" (Nursing mother syndrome)

7 Celebrities I Admire: Yuck, I don't really admire any celebrities - but here's some I enjoy watching
1. Reese Witherspoon
2. Nicole Kidman
3. Hugh Jackman
4. Matt Damon
5. Daniel Craig
6. Mark Ruffalo
7. Meg Ryan (prebotox)

7 Favorite Foods
1. King Crab with butter
2. New York Strip medium rare with butter
3. Homemade, white yeast rolls with butter
4. Hot Chocolate and popcorn with butter
5. Hearty Winter-time soups (often with wheat-sourdough bread and butter)
6. Lindt Creme Brulle Petit Dessert chocolate bars (not with butter)
7. Ice cream

7 People I Tag:
1. Kristen
2. Lindsey
3. Audrey
4. Wendy
5. Amy
6. Lyndi
7. Anita

My new favorite Holiday

Okay, so I think Halloween is the coolest. I don't feel any stress, and it's just a ton of fun - candy, costumes and cute kids. Elaina had a blast trick-or-treating. The first door we knocked on, she walked right in and started petting the dog. We had quite a time trying to get her to leave. After that she got the hang of it and loved it - also we went with some friends which added to our fun.
We always have fun carving jack-o-lanterns. Torry did Jack and I did Mr. Cyclops. We tried to involve Elaina, but after a couple of handfulls of pumpkin goop, she decided (correctly) that watching "Nightmare Before Christmas" and eating candy would be more fun.


So, we've had the Tinkerbell costume for almost a year now, so in order to make it a little more special for Halloween, I found some glitter stardust stuff to sprinkle in her hair. She loved it and went around showing everybody. It also made a mess of our house. Her enjoyment of it was well worth it though.
For one of our pre-Halloween family home evenings we made shaped sugar cookies. True to Elaina form, she dumped colored sugar all over them. The black sugar on her cookie was so thick that it turned her tongue black.


On another Family Home Evening night we made a haunted halloween graham cracker house. Although Elaina enjoyed helping out, she spent most of the time just eating the candy.




Torry here - Heather's tired and fresh out of caption ideas. So, here I go:
One Saturday we took a drive to a pumpkin patch. In addition to thousands of pumpkins in a big field, they had a big wagon and several bins full of pumpkins. But wait! They also had an area where you could use large slingshots to launch small pumpkins at targets.

On the non-pumpkin front, there was also face painting - Elaina loved her ladybug.










For those who don't know, we live in a planned community called Issaquah Highlands. As required by law in all planned communities, we had a fall Halloween festival in the neighborhood. Also mandated: a "green" theme. They even had all-natural gum flavored with mint extract and cane sugar, made of naturally occurring gum bases (tree sap I think) and colored with--get this--chlorophyll. It tasted vaguely of a lawn mower grass catcher. For those who didn't want natural mint tainting their consumption of chlorophyll, there was even a booth handing out free samples of wheat grass juice.

However, the green theme was contained to the gum and a few small signs. Everything else was pure old-fashioned Halloween fun. A costume parade, plenty of candy, pumpkin-carving contest, giant inflatable funhouse toys, fresh cider and pony rides made for a fun afternoon just blocks from our home.

That's not very nice

So, Elaina loves the story of the Gingerbread man - what child wouldn't? It's about a cookie that comes to life - cool, huh? Anyway, I thought I would be a super neat mom and bake a gingerbread man/woman with her. We had tons of fun and she loved dumping pink and purple sugar all over it. After it came out of the oven, I asked if she wanted to eat it and she said "yes", but she didn't watch me cutting it up. So she ate a little of it and went down for a nap. Meanwhile I cut it up and put it on a plate because it was so big. When she woke up she wanted to see the gingerbread woman and I showed it to her all cut up on the plate. She was not very happy with me. "Mommy, you smashed it! That's not very nice." She proceeded to tell everyone we ran into the crime that I had committed. She made me feel like a villain - not really. It was really cute.

Okay, so I know what ya'll are thinking - Heather doesn't take pictures of her son - is he ugly, does he have a hideous birth defect she doesn't want us to know about? Seriously - I feel like a bad mom with the lack of pictures of Camden - and he is just about the most handsome little man that I have ever laid eyes on (no bias there). I think with all the moving and upheaval of our lives, I have just lost track of time, so if you don't mind, I'd like to take a little trip down memory lane and go back a couple of months and catch myself up.This seems to be the only time she ever wants me to take her picture - when she has the moon boots on. She thinks it's sooo cool.

Camden's first time with gel in his hair - he's already competing for the girls attention at church.

Torry climbed Mt. Timp this summer - he couldn't convince me to go. I enjoy not having sore muscles. Plus he got some good male bonding time with his best bud from highschool.


Torry's sister, Stephanie, is getting married this Chirstmas to a very sweet guy - Kyle. Kyle scored big points by helping Torry unload our stuff into a storage unit after we moved to Utah from Chicago. He also survived a camping trip to southern Utah with extended family, a rite that all potential spouses in this family must pass through (except for Todd, but he made up for it by actually picking up a rattlesnake Steve Erwin style during last year's trip). Welcome to the family!
Elaina got her first haircut this summer - just a trim. I was worried that she wouldn't like it very much, but she did and she is always asking me if she can get another one. I'm afraid I'm raising a salon junkie.
Elaina had so much fun hanging out with her grandparents this summer. Marie was always doing fun things with Elaina. Here they are making play dough.


We camped down in Capital Reef this summer with Torry's mom's side of the family. We went on some pretty sweet hikes. The first day we hiked down a river bed with lots of waterfalls. It was so much fun.










We also went home to visit my family in Montana this summer. My parents sold their house on the lake, which is kind of sad - but my grandma's house is on the same lake and she's willed it so that it can't be sold for 40 years after the death of the last surviving child. I feel pretty confident that we will always have a place to go boating.
Camden hated the life jacket, but after awhile he just gave up and fell asleep. I think my mom has a similar picture of me at that age.