Climbing the walls..uhh..fridge

Sometimes I don't know how my 19 month old child does it. Today I found footprints going up my fridge!

PeaPod the Peacock and Poor PeaPod

This weekend started with some fun at the Hogle Zoo called Boo Zoo. It was a zoo at the zoo! We had no idea how popular this event was! Kids get dressed up in their Halloween costumes and trick-or-treat throughout the zoo. We invited our Christensen cousins along but unfortunately we soon lost them in the crowd since PeaPod was too little to wait for the treats. We'll have to get together again for some real together time. Nana and Auntie Krissy came along just for the fun of it. PeaPod made quite an impression running wild throughout the zoo as a peacock! Everywhere we went you would hear, "Look at the peacock!" She was pointed to just as much as the real animals! PeaPod loved the bears best this time and pointed to them saying, "Bar" every time the black bear would walk by.




The best part was when the free roaming turkeys came face to face with her. I shook her tail just to see what the male turkey would do. He was very disgruntled at having some feathery competition! He strutted toward her with a "Gobble! Gobble Gobble!" It was really funny, but I scooped her up quickly and didn't antogonize the poor fellow again! (I have memories of being chased by an oversized goose at Wheeler's Farm.) PeaPod wasn't feeling very well, so we left before noon.

I have no idea what I was doing in this pic, but I think I missed my chance at stardom doing cartoon voices as a career.

















Later that day, TheMan aka the Mad Scientist had his engineering friends get together to work on one of his "projects" they had been engineering. It is a trebuchet. "What in the world is a trebuchet?" you ask. Besides being a fun word to say, a trebuchet is a siege engine that was employed in the Middle Ages either to smash masonry walls or to throw projectiles over them. Yep, my husband and his friends are making one. They want to throw pumpkins as the projectiles. Why? For fun. The neighbors can relax, because although the trebuchet construction is happening in my garage, the location of the seige is not yet determined.



By Saturday evening, PeaPod's cold had turned into a full blown fever of an ugly 103 degrees. So we visited urgent care, received some antibiotics and fluids. Sunday was a cuddle day alternating between Daddy and Mommy. I came home early from work today since her fever was still high. She's doing much better now. Poor PeaPod.

Comments Open

So, with the persuasion of my sisters, I have opened my blog to comments. No big deal, right? (Cringe) Introspective as I am, a year ago I thought a lot about the why I was starting a blog and my target audience. I had appreciated a lot of personal blogs and knew what I wanted to write and didn't want to be like. I wanted to write for the right reasons. Basically, I didn't want to be a Sneetch looking for a star on my belly and pointing to it. I did not initially set up this blog for comments because I felt comments might clash with my goals and focus for this blog which were and still are:
1. Create an easy way to document my family's life and share it with them - wherever they are.
2. Have you ever heard the quote: "Dance like nobody's watching"? Well, I wanted to blog like nobody was watching except God and my family. And, hey, if anyone else stumbled across it and was uplifted in some way (even if they were comforted because I get drowned in laundry too sometimes :), I'd be really happy.
3. Blog to inspire myself to be better at each of my roles in life: wife, mother, etc. I want this blog to be a gift of myself to my husband, children and family. To share my love for them and pieces of who I am in a different medium.
4. To help define the beauty and perspective of our everyday life.
My goals are still the same and I hope that I can continue to blog according to them with comments activated. So, this is a test. This is only a test....So's life too, I guess!

Green Now Gone, Fun Goes On

It snowed this week, the day after I took these photos. Now all the garden leaves are gone and the perennials are going to their winter slumber. I don't think we'll slumber much though nor the playground if SweetPea can help it!

Little Mother

Congratulations to M&M!

I love seeing two wonderful people who are in love with one another decide to get married. Matt and Mel are one of these wonderful couples. They were married and sealed to one another in the LDS Salt Lake Temple this Friday. Individually, they are great people. They are two accomplished engineers. She has experience as a Disney Imagineer (that is so cool!) and she's hot (not stereotypical in female engineer). He is working while going to school to complete his MBA. And it is necessary to mention that Matt was 1986 David Bowie from Labrynth last year for Halloween. Hilarious. Who knows what these two can do together?! After getting married and sealed for time and all eternity in the LDS Salt Lake Temple (same temple I got married), they celebrated with friends and family later that evening.
They made the reception meaningful and individual by designing and doing many of the details themselves. Because of their first initials are M&M, they decided on a chocolate theme - from the colors to the food!
To top it off: THE GROOM MADE THE CAKE! I'm sure they will give as much personal attention to their marriage as they did preparing for it and the celebration afterward. Congratulations you guys!

Dust Bunny Buttocks

I can't decide which of these moves is my favorite: the sitting-and-twisting-to-the-side-dustbin maneuver or the arabesque-like-leg-lift-while-wiping-the-table maneuver!

Picture and inspiration via Brocante Home

Today is Worth Remembering

This weekend was my church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints' Semiannual Conference. It is wonderful to be able to listen to our prophets and leaders in this modern day. There was a lot of great content, so I won't share it all here, but one of my favorite talks was by President Monson. He spoke of embracing today. Valuing what you have been given. He quoted a quote from one of my favorite musicals, Music Man: "You pile up enough tomorrows, and you'll find you are left with nothing but a lot of empty yesterdays." I loved how President Monson asked us to focus on what is important and embrace today. His talk reinforced for me why I'm a doing this personal blog - to embrace and remember the Todays and Nows, to share with my family and my children of myself and our life through these growing years. And his talk made me feel like the rest of the quote from Music Man: "I don't know about you, but I'd like to make today worth remembering!" The picture above is why today worth remembering. Me and PeaPod digging in the sandbox at sunset on a beautiful October day.

At Work

If I'm going to go to work, I'm glad I'm going to a practice with people with such big hearts. Most of those I work with are volunteers helping the less served in Utah. Everyone here has a great focus on service. And I LOVE working with all of them! Love you guys!

He Cracks Me Up

It has begun...

In a Fine Fettle

So, I haven't been hanging around, but this guy has:

My emailed Word of the Day is "fettle". I love it. Words are such fun. I sometimes pronounce words wrong though, because I read them more than I hear them. When I was younger, I pronounced "genre" and "epitome" wrong for quite a while because I didn't know the true pronunciation! Totally embarrassing teenage moment saying "epi-tome" instead of "epi-to-me". Sigh...Live and learn! I look at the pronounciation guide in the dictionary more now.
I am in a fine fettle today. I haven't blogged much because my land line has been out of commission. But now I'm online again - thanks to my handy-dandy-hottie-husband! Enough of that train of thought - you guys aren't reading this for that kind of stimulation...are you? Anyhow, what have I been doing? Well, Halloween is coming! So some of my favorite holidays are around the corner: Halloween, Christmas and Valentines! I've been doing that.
Plus, been learning come HTML stuff and getting my sister's and my website going! No Fuss Fabulous is up and running! Hooray! We really love parties, blogging and things that help us make our lives better but less stressful - basically, we like the Fabulous part of life but not the Fuss, so we're collaborating our ideas on one website! And guess what?!? No Fuss Fabulous is in a fine fettle!!! (I love alliteration!) Check the site out, we're having a great time putting it together. We have a year full of ideas to share. We've been so inspired by so many creative people. This is our way of inspiring ourselves to be a little better in many areas of our lives. What else have I been doing? The mommy thing has been super fun with the Princess Pea speaking all sorts of words now. She's finally getting her top teeth and molars! Eight teeth erupting at once - yikes. I need to buy ibuprofen in bulk. I love hearing the CRUNCH sound as she bites into a cracker! My favorite word of hers currently is: "bug" she is so excited to see one but a little anxious at the same time! And her fav song right now is "The Wheels on the Bus" and a Halloween salsa dance song I have on CD! You should see her dance!
What else am I doing? My church has asked me to help with ten 12-14 year old girls! We call this age group Beehives. The last leader over these girls was awesome, so I hope I don't have to fill those shoes but bring my own shoes (too bad they are running shoes right now and not 3 inch wedges...) to the table. I'm excited to get to know the girls and help them in their lives at this time.
What else? I've been working - I was totally aghast (another great word) at CheckerAuto Parts yesterday - yes, I know, why in the world would I want to be there?! TheMan was fixing something and I waited in the car (since I hate the smell of auto parts) when I saw a patient of mine 9 months pregnant and smoking! Never mind that she isn't supposed to be smoking because she'll give her toothless-self a dry socket! I sent a glare at her through my sunglasses, but I didn't want her to recognize me since her boyfriend seemed a bit scary. Even though he was shorter than TheMan, I think he would have won in the fight due to not following rules - think Ninja versus Pirate. TheMan likes Pirates better, but I think he's a Ninja at heart. I think there should be motherhood licensing! Motherhood is a lot harder than driving and you can endanger a lot more people with it! Grrrr....Okay, enough of the rant. Life is good...I mean:
Life is in a fine fettle!