Well, the time has come

To make a big announcement!
Can you believe I found baby clip art in a neutral color?

Oh yeah, and I'm pregnant!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The due date is March 8, 2010. Baby ticker and maybe pictures of my baby bump that I have ALREADY are to come soon.
My first doctor's appointment is September 15th.
And No, We are not going to find out. Still. Sorry for all those who are waiting for us to change our minds on that decision.

I am 11 weeks and almost on the mend - it is past noon and I still haven't thrown up. I can cook and wake up before noon.
The sickness is thankfully waning. Thankfully!!!!!

Ohh! Sparkly!

Have you ever wondered if sparklers could be caught on camera?
Wonder no more!

Why Yes!, Yes they can! And everyone can join on in! Benjamin.....


Peter.....

Tre.....
Of course Gabrielle.......
And my nephew Sam
I really like this one. I think he has a great pose


And of course this one with lots and lots of sparkly action going on


Here they are together, in all their sparkly glory
What can I say? Happy 4th!

catching up

Lots and lots and LOTS of catching up to do. I have finally taken the time to download and reduce the pictures (I now have such an awesome camera that I have to reduce the size of my images - yes, each and every one- before I can post them)
First, there was Easter

My friend and her son B. came over for Easter - we had a great time!
There they are - divvying up their booty

Then we got puppies - Midnight and Shadow
You have to guess which one is which

I have a really great video of Benjamin and the puppies, but you have to watch it in the post below. Posting a large number of pictures (especially in a certain sequence) can be a real pain. Throwing in a video in the middle is just about impossible.

Then, Benjamin turned two. His favorite thing to watch is Blue's Clues (even more so now. He walks around with little notepads and a crayon and will flip pages, make a few circles and then flip some more pages and make more circles - he really gets into it when Steve is writing in his notebook as well. Benjamin can even say "notebook" now and that is really big for our ever silent Benjamin). So I made him a Blue cake.

And he really liked the glo doodle he got.

Then, just days after his 2nd birthday, on my first day off from work, I took him to the doctor for his well check up. We were completely ready to go; I had even made the follow up appointment and then he trips and bangs his head on an interior doorway inside the pediatrician's office and cuts his head to the point where he needed staples. Of course, they didn't have those at the doctor's so we had to go to the hospital. It was one glorious waiting room filled day


Then, one of our puppies died. It was a horrible heart wrenching experience for our family. You can't see it in the photo, but Tre wrote "Shadow Our Dog" on this rock that we have always thought looks like a heart.


The next day we went camping with the cub scouts. This a picture of the cubs with a local taxidermist. He brought a trailer full of animals. It sounds grim (especially just after losing a puppy), but it was actually rather neat

Then, after school was over, my mother came to visit for a week with the express intent of showing me how to sew. She and I didn't get as much done as she wanted, but she did show Gabrielle how to make a little doll. That Gabrielle of course gave to Benjamin. My mother made a matching one for a little girl from our Branch who turned two that week

And finally, we got another puppy. When we got Shadow and Midnight, we got them from our neighbors who had found a whole litter left in the ditch next to the street. In Early April, when we first got them, Larry decided it would be better to get two, so that the one wouldn't be lonely. At the time, our neighbors actually had three puppies. Peter really really wanted to get all three and not break up their little band. He was so upset he had to walk home before the rest of us did. After Shadow died, we talked about getting another one. We knew that Midnight was just so lonely. We finally talked to the neighbor again, who still had the last puppy and we got her - last week in fact. Her name is April. She and Midnight are very happy to be together again.

It took several tries for me to get this picture. She wanted to jump up on me and she just wouldn't be still.

doggie video

just too cute, yes, I am the bad mommy who video tapes her son falling instead of helping him

It's time to embed again

It has just been too long since my last post. However, as you know, since you are reading this and the 3 of you who read (I have given up on saying no one, because I am reminded that there are some who read - it's kind of nice when you remind me, I guess that is why I say it - so I am conceding - I DO have readers [although three might be wildly exaggerating things]) know that I am a very lazy person and have not downloaded any pictures from the camera, I am indulging myself in posting an entry about my new celebrity crush:

isn't he super cute?!!!!!!!!!! Pekka Kuusisto from Finland. Absolute genius on the violin. Not that I am super into violinists, but I like good music. I first saw him in the documentary "4" and just fell in love. Then I did a bit of websearching recently and found out that he attended IU during the same years that my sister in laws did! Oh so close. I was only down there during those years once or twice - too bad I didn't swing by the music department. I could have met a star.

Well, I guess I had better deliver on the embedding. So here he is and his mega cuteness

I would embed more, but I don't want to make it absolutely impossible to pull up this up, so here is a link. Not that anyone is interested (It isn't very interesting by the way until about 50 seconds in), but I will probably link to it myself - yes, my selfishness rears its ugly head the most in my blog. But I guess that is okay since it is mine
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Atnt6UF6ufU&NR=1
oh yes, and this is why I developed a crush in the first place:
part one
and part two

I have been meaning to post this, but I have just been slammed - as you see - it's a MONTH old:

Spanish Word of the Day
Sunday, March 28, 2010

Yesterday's Word - Previous Words - Help

pelirrojo, adjective
red-haired, red-headed

Red hair is not very common in the Spanish-speaking world, though in Celtic influenced north-west Spain it is possibly more common than elsewhere.

un adolescente pecoso y pelirrojo
a freckled, red-haired teenager

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
that will be Peter in a few years - DON'T remind me.
I think pelirojo was the first Spanish word I learned after Peter was born

I promise I will post more interesting posts with actual pictures later

I need to go to Church for conference from now on

If you read this blog, which you don't, because no one reads it --- But just hypothetically, if you did, you would most likely know me. And if you know me, you know just how much of a slacker I am. And because I am a slacker when conference comes, I gleefully sleep in because I know I can watch it on my own home television. And now that I have a DVR I can slack even more since I don't even have to be there when it is airing. And then, my mother decides to come over to "watch" even though we rarely sit down together and do just that.

So now, my main memory of the Sunday broadcast has nothing to do with anything that our beloved apostles and first presidency said, but it has everything to do with a conversation about Benjamin that went something like this:

Benjamin toddled over to the couch where Larry left his coffee mug on one of the arms and starts to babble. My mother exclaims: "He said coffee!" (You know, while we are "trying to watch conference" - loose interpretation of the word trying) and Gabrielle just dryly says "we're gonna die"

Oh the tragedy! For that will outweigh most likely any conference memory (conference memory inferring that it is something actually said during conference) that I will ever have.