Christmas reading

I'm reading some C. S. Lewis books that Matt got me for Christmas (yay Christmas books!) and they are NOT the Narnia books.  They're science fiction, about this philologist named Ransom who visits some other planets and whatnot.  Of course there is some God stuff in there, too, only He's called "Maleldil" or something.  I keep getting hung up on the "Mal-" prefix because it means "bad" in Latin and God is good, but "Beneldil" sounds like a drug.  Whatever; according to the books the solar language is not related to the Earth language anyway.  I'm halfway through the second book, and I have two thoughts.

1.  We know SO MUCH about space these days.  I'm pretty sure that I take most of my knowledge for granted.  The Earth does NOT look anything like the moon.  Space is cold.  Making your spaceship spherical does not mean that it will have gravity.  Being in space for a month without exercising (because it uses up all the air) would probably give you the bones of a 90 year old woman.

2.  In most Christian denominations, Eve gets such a bad rap.  Yeah, she ate the fruit and got kicked out of the garden, but if she hadn't nobody else would be here.  She fulfilled an important part of Heavenly Father's plan to get folks into some bodies; she did NOT screw us out of paradise.  She deserves more credit.

These two thoughts may seem unrelated, but I don't care.  Anyway, the books are fun so far.  The devil is them, too!  What a creeper.

What I need is SWIM goggles.

I needed to chop an onion, so I put on my racquetball goggles.  I hoped that they would help me to keep from crying.

They did not.

The following picture is a personification of the ":s" emoticon:

Temptation

We got a small box in the mail yesterday.  Sadly, it was addressed to the previous owners.  I want to open it SO BADLY.  I am pretty sure that is illegal, though, and that I could get sent to jail for like a hundred years.  And it is such a small box, I can't believe  its contents are worth that much of my time.

Scene from today:

I made Izzy a sandwich.  Izzy-sized, you know, just one piece of bread.  She ate half of it and then wandered off, so I put the other half back on the plate on the floor next to me.  I looked over a minute later to discover that she had wandered back and was sitting next to me...yup, on the sandwich.  I thought maybe it was just typical baby unobservance, so I shooed her off and moved the plate, but she found it again.  For some reason she just really wanted to sit on her food.  What a crumb-bum.

Wee Wii

I like to play the balance games and whatnot on the Wii Fit Plus, and maybe someday they will actually help me be less clumsy.  Right now I am trying to figure out what things I can do while also holding the baby.  She gets to feeling left out and then NOBODY has fun.  So far, hula hooping with me makes her giggle the most.

Holidays are ALMOST happening.

Christmas is in two weeks, guys!  I'm pretty excited.  We have a Christmas tree with twinkly lights, mint candies, and five pounds of Danish butter cookies.  (Thank you Costco!)

There are a couple of reasons I love this time of year.  Here they are in list format:

1.  Usually I head home to Washington and get to see all my family folks.  This year, though, we're staying in Utah.  It will be my first Christmas away from my homeland (...state...whatever) and I'm a little sad, but I'm also plenty eager to see what our little family will get up to.  It's high time to start some traditions of our own.

2.  Christmas is about Jesus!  Specifically, it's about His birth, and that means nothing bad has happened to Him yet in any of the stories we tell.  He's just a wee baby, come to save the world, and some sheep were there.

3.  Presents!  I like getting presents, but I think I enjoy having an excuse to give them even more.  Lots of times I see something and I think, "This would be awesome for What's-Her-Face!"  Now I have a reason to give it to her...face.

4.  Sometimes I forget just how dang awesome I am at certain types of crafty things.  Around this time of year I generally find reasons to push up my shirtsleeves, get down to business, and impress myself.

5.  Cookies.  (See opening paragraph.)

Stream of consciousness

Blogging, blah blah blah blobbity blah.

I have been sick for what seems like two weeks now.  I am now at the point where I go through a box of tissues a day and my nose has a constant tingle that may or may not lead to a satisfying sneeze.

Boogers are gross!  Izzy has them too, but she's a lot less conscientious about where she wipes them.  :s

I have had TWO brilliant ideas for Christmas gifts, but apparently that's not enough.  Now I actually have to implement them.  Also, I need a third brilliant idea, but I'm not sure who it's supposed to be for yet.

I love that Google will spell check things for me.  It better not be screwing with me.

Seven is my new favorite number.

Can I just say that I love They Might Be Giants?  I've been a fan for a while, but once I discovered that they wrote songs for kids I amped up my fannage.  They make little people songs that big people can appreciate.  This is Izzy's current favorite, and we watch it a couple of times a day.



I like it EVERY TIME.

Finally, some pictures!

Okay, so we've been here for just over a week.  All our stuff is moved, but obviously it isn't all put away.  I'm doing my darndest, though.  Give me another month to get everything squared away...  In the meantime, here is our house!  At least, the rooms inside (it is too much raining outside for fottergraphs).

Here is my lovely kitchen, with a pantry and usable cupboard space:

 Dining room and laundry room, respectively:

Here's the way out on to the deck:

 (Which looks like this:)

And here's how all the lot fits together.

 The living room:

The foyer (perhaps that word is too grand...):

The garage (with recycling bin,woo!):

The baby's room:

The master bedroom:

 AND bathroom.  Pretty much I love the huge tub and shower.

Here's the third bedroom, which is where we are putting things that we don't quite know what to do with yet. Eventually this room will be awesome, though.

 Going downstairs...

 ...to the basement!  This is where I hope someday to have a couch.

And someday here, a fireplace.

This is the storage room, which is kind of huge.  There's a third aisle that you can't see.

Bathroom...

 Bedroom...

 Unfinished bedroom...

And here's a tiny door under the stairs.  Someday we'll put a light in it and cut out a window, and one of our lucky children can live in it.

 So that's that.  We quite like it.

These are the haps:

We have been doing some moving this weekend, and I just now found my computer again.  Also the camera is probably in an unlabeled box full of unrelated objects, so I cannot post pictures yet.  Soon, soon...  Hopefully we will finish up the transfer of objects sometime tomorrow, and then we will have a house full of boxes!  The house is big and we do not have enough furniture!

Happy Halloween to everybody, although we didn't do much to celebrate.  There was the moving for one thing, and then there was a sick baby.  She's got a fever, runny nose, sore throat and a rash that may or may not be related; it is hard to tell.  We did not go trick-or-treating, even though she was going to be a bee and I was going to be a flower.  It is a good thing that we forewent (foregoed?) this because she ended up vomiting hot mucus onto Matt before the night was out.  IT WAS GROSS AND SAD.  But today we stayed home from church and it seems that she is almost all better.  Hooray for healing!

I am stealing internet from the neighbors (who I haven't met yet) because ours won't be up until Tuesday.  I feel just a little guilty so I'm gonna stop here.  PLEASE don't tell on me.

Happy Birthday Party

Izzy got a bit of a party today.  It was pink and green and there were dinosaurs.  Also she had a pretty birthday girl tiara.

She was not terribly interested in opening the presents after the first one, but she had a friend to help her out.

I am extremely proud of the birthday cake I made.  It was delicious and really hard to frost and very pretty.  I even made the dinosaur, out of some sort of moldable chocolate.  Woo me!

I know it's a big cake for one very small person, but now she won't need cake for the rest of her life.  She started off very tentatively...

...but after a while she got the hang of things.

And then her friend came back to help her some more.

All in all it was very good times.  A lot of excitement for a little person maybe (CAKE! PRESENTS! WRAPPING PAPER!) so who knows when we'll get to bed.

Happy Birthday Baby!

Today was Izzy's birthday.  We snuggled a lot, had a nice bath, went on a walk and ate some cheese...all things that people should do on their birthdays.  The real celebration won't be until Saturday, though, when family can come over for cake and presents.  It will be good times, yes?

Izzy got two presents today, however.  One was a treasure chest full of gauzy fabrics to play with, and the other was a brand new girl cousin (born at 3:12 AM).  I hope she doesn't mind sharing her birthday.

Photo log

Today we got our pictures taken by a professional.  This was kind of a big deal since we didn't even get professional engagement or wedding photos.  It was a learning experience, I will say.  Next time I will be more specific about what kind of pictures I want taken (more family shots) and I will ask the photographer not to tease the baby in order to make her smile; she's happy for a moment and then gets mad and then our time gets cut short.  So...not an ideal experience, but at least we are still good looking!  Here's a few of my favorites: