Christmas Joy

I LOVE CHRISTMAS!! Seriously. I know everyone loves Christmas and it is everyone's favorite holiday, but I love Christmas. Very few things in life make me happier than the Christmas season. Family. The Gospel. That's it. (Disneyland is a very close fourth).

To start the season off right we went to a tree farm today to get our FIRST REAL TREE AS A FAMILY! It was so exciting. The weather was beautiful. President Clark did not tell the truth when he said Boston winters were worse than Rexburg winters. Today was sunny and about 60 degrees. Perhaps I speak to soon...We found the perfect sized tree for our little apartment. Penny digs it. We all do. The apartment smells like pine and sounds like Christmas (I have holiday tunes playing 12/7). It is so exciting to see our presents starting to surround the tree! And although I do have to work on Christmas day, we fly out Christmas night and can't wait to see family. But for now we are all enjoying our little holiday haven.

I'm Back

First of all, I got these Kate Spade shoes, originally $258, for $59. Thanks, TJ Maxx.

Apparently the looming specter of personal humiliation is not enough to compel me to write a novel in one month. So back to the important stuff. Penny just turned 6 months on Sunday! I can't believe how big she is. She rolls over really well now, but she still prefers her back (unless shes on the bed in which case she prefers her stomach). She can sit up, kind of, but since shes long and thin instead of squat and chubby like many babies, she doesn't have a great core to squish down on. She just sort of falls over after a minute. But she's also kind of a genius, for instance, she knows how to use the light switch! When the light is off she will put her hand, palm up, under the switch and push up. Then when it is on she will put her hand over the switch, palm down, and push down. Brilliant! (pun intended).


Here are some pics I took of her on her 6 month birthday (The only two that weren't blurry).

NaNoWriMo

November is National Novel Writing Month! So, I have decided to take the challenge. 1,700 words a day and by the end of the month I should have a full fledged novel. I am only blogging this because NaNoWriMo (the organization sponsoring this event) encourages all participants to tell everyone they know that they are writing a novel, in hopes that the looming specter of humiliation will carry us forward. I know it's November 2nd, so you're already 1700 words behind, but if anyone else is interested here's the website, http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/561200. That's my user page. My user name is Smackster. My WIP is titled Don't Shoot the Messenger (Or How We Changed the Block).

What am I doing wasting all these words!? If my blogging is a little sparse this month, I apologize, but now you know why.

I'll see you in December.

(Don't worry I'll make Dave upload cute Penny pictures)

Werewolf Bar Mitzvah Spooky Scary...

Even though I have to work Halloween night (boo!) we decided that we couldn't miss the opportunity go to Salem this year, so we went on a Tuesday night. We went through a haunted house, which wasn't that scary. But we ended the night with a haunted walking tour, which is when a very knowledgeable guide walks you through all of Salem's witch history hot spots. It was really interesting and spooky, and I think I caught a picture of a ghost...
The second floor of this house is where they did much of the witch interrogating...I think that white smudge is the ghost of a woman who hung herself while being kept locked up during interrogations...or maybe it's rain?Penny was un-scareable.

Canoein' the Charles

Last week we went a canoein' on the Charles River. It was so much fun and sooo pretty. The leaves were turning all different shades of fall and Penny was enjoying the ride. Dave did most of the rowing as I did the baby-holding, but on our way back Penny fell asleep so we both got to row and enjoy the crisp fall air. It was such a great day. Penny was looking so cute in her infant life vest. I didn't know they had such things.

Which brings me to another subject, and that is that I pretty much always assume no one is going to let you do anything with an infant. But they do! They even have special infant things! My plan was to hide in the car with Penny and then smuggle us on to the canoe after Dave had paid. Luckily, Dave's idea won out, which was to just all go in there normal-like and rent a canoe. They procured a special life jacket for Penny and although she hated it, I loved it.

Here are some gems from the day.

Soup du Week

Since I am working a lot of nights and can't make dinner I have started making a different soup at the beginning of each week so Dave (and me) have something yummy and warm to eat. I have acutally done this 4 weeks in a row! So I figured it was blogworthy, and time to start asking for ideas... Soups I have made so far:

1. Taco soup
2. Broccoli cheddar (probably my fave so far)
3. Potato Bacon
4. Corn chowder

Any other ideas?

FALL in love...

Fall is awesome! The leaves are so pretty and the weather has been lovely. I have been working most nights but Penny and I get to hang out during the day. Today we went to Orchard House! (Louisa May Alcott's house). It was so neat and the tour guide was so knowledgeable. Most of the people in the tour, including the guide, seemed more interested in Penny than the tour. How can I blame them? Penny and me at Orchard House.


The above three are me and Penny on our walk to the park.

I love that girl. Being a mom is awesome.

Wow it's been months, if not a full year since I've blogged... I guess it's time I start pulling my weight in the blogosphere. So life is great, school is good, we like Boston a lot... but probably not enough to keep us here for the rest of our lives (so don't worry family). Penny is reaching new levels of cuteness, levels that can only be reached with videos, so here are a couple. The audio wasn't working for me for some reason, so let me know if it's messed up for everyone else.




Penny does this funny thing sometimes where she sucks her upper lip... it's weird in a adorable sort of way.


And Uncle Joe and our friend Justin (that I've known since my first summer term at BYU-I way back in 2000) were our on the east coast and stopped in to visit, so we went to a Red Socks game and watched them get creamed by Toronto. During the 8th inning everyone sings "Sweet Caroline" and I missed most of it but you get the picture.

Penny Likes It

I think Penny likes it here. She just keeps getting cuter! She sits up like a pro on the couch but still has a little trouble on her own. She's getting there though. Here are some recent pics!

If it isn't fresh, it isn't LEGAL.

I got a job as a server at Legal Sea Foods, which is basically the premier sea food place on the east coast, if not the country. If you don't believe me, Bon Appétit magazine touts a meal at Legal Sea Foods as among America’s “Top Ten Tried-and-True” dining experiences. Legal is also included in Patricia Schultz’s popular guidebook, "1,000 Places to See Before You Die." So I was really excited to get hired.

And today was my first day.

So I get out on the floor, all ready to show off my service skills. I get the drink order for my first table of the day, a sweet, gentle elderly couple out for an early lunch. Two iced-teas. Simple. And, as if my life were part of some ridiculously cliche comedy, I served the lady her tea and spilled the gentleman's on his lap. A full glass of iced tea. Luckily the old man was as sweet and gentle as he looked, jesting that it must have been the drink ghost who pushed me. Bless his sweet, sweet heart and may it have many more beats.

The rest of the day went smoothly and I really am looking forward to the job. I will work night shifts so Dave can watch Penny after class. We'll seehow it all pans out...

What We've Been Up To...

In brief we moved three thousand miles across the country to the great state of Massachusetts, Dave by land, me by air. Dave started his Masters program in International Econ and Finance at Brandeis University and has been busy busy.

But we've had some fun too.
We visited the great American, Paul Revere's, grave.

And his house.
And his statue.

We visited Henry David Thoreau's shanty.

And let him hold our baby.We swam in Walden Pond. Beautiful and so warm!

We saw a free symphony at the Shell, an outdoor performance venue in Boston!

And won a ward pie baking contest! Well we didn't win. Ok, so we didn't even place, but we did enter and that makes us winners in my eyes! It was a "Sugar Cookie Apple Pie". We didn't have enough pie crust to cover the top so we made sugar cookie dough and covered it with that. I thought it was bomb and ate three pieces.

We're trying to get our apartment together and once we do I'll post some pics!

Common Sense

Last night I finished Glenn Beck's Common Sense, and Thomas Paine's, which is included in the back. Here are some quotes from Thomas Paine that I thought I'd share:

"A long time of not thinking a thing wrong gives it the superficial appearance of being right."

Oh, the list of things in our world today that this applies to...

"Time makes more converts than reason."

"Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence."

Fig leaves...

"I draw my idea of the form of government from a principle in nature which no art can overturn,viz, that the more simple anything is, the less liable it is to be disordered."

So unless there's only one word in 72 pt. font on each page, 1,000 page bills don't qualify.


Sorry to wax political on you, but I really think it is important to remember that our founding fathers didn't just sit around while their government abused them, they made their voice heard. I am proud of the many people in our country who are making their voices heard and encourage you to find out who your congressman is and voice your concerns when they arise. This is a great country, and we have the opportunity to keep it that way.

So maybe this is the longest book recommendation ever. Common Sense. Read it.

Don't Leave!

I changed our blog. I just like these colors better, but I'm not very good with computers so I know it doesn't look very great yet. Just consider this page "under construction", but also "open during contrucion".

Pretty Penny, Lucky Penny, A Penny For Your Thoughts...

Cute.

Cuter.

Cutest.

I've been trying hard to get video of Penny talking and singing like a madwoman but everytime I put a camera in front of her face she gets baffled by technology and goes speechless (one thing we already have in common). We have managed to get some more cute pictures though! She can hold her head up really good now, an exciting new development.

Also I think Penny might be part mermaid. She loves being in the water and really wails when you take her out. Come to think of it, when you take her out she sounds a lot like Daryl Hannah speaking mermish in Splash...Penny the 1/2 mermaid. Maybe that will give her a leg up when applying to colleges. Oh you're one eighth cherokee? Im one half mermaid.

Baby Makers

This picture is one of the reasons Idaho was particularly hard to leave behind this last time. We had a little farewell dinner with some friends on our last night, and no, we didn't just invite a random people with babies--these really are our best friends in Idaho and we just all happen to have new babies. Shauna (the girl to the left of me) had our babies the same week! How fun.

Caught Red handed (and faced)

This is me getting caught by Dave being the worst mom ever, and although it looks like Penny is about to slip out of her pajamas and off the side of the bed, I promise I was holding her very securely. And don't we look cozy?

Lately...

Penny has been cuter than ever lately. Although it's really hard to catch a smile, I have managed to catch some other cute faces on camera..

I couldn't put captions under each picture cause I'm blogtarded, but one of these is called the "blue steel". I'm sure you can figure it out.