Valentine’s Day 2012

I have to start off by mentioning that Aaron and I do not have a history of fantastic Valentine’s Days. Sure, we have had some great ones in the past, but we’ve had some bombs. First Valentine’s Day together: we’d been dating about a month. Aaron planned a super sweet day for us. My whole family had been sick with the stomach flu, but I was just fine. I did issue a warning, though, that I could succumb at any time. Good thing. We went and played racquetball together, which was extremely fun. Then we went back to his house where he had brought every plant that his mother owned into the living room, turned the heater up, played nature sounds, and prepared a faux picnic. This was extremely thoughtful, since I really struggle during winter and the doldrums usually peak around February. So for my Valentine’s gift he gave me summer. Can I get a collective, “AWWWW!!!” Then, to top it off, he had rented Gone with the Wind, one of my favorite movies, for us to watch together. Yes, ladies, this is why I married him. He’s great like that. Everything was going fine until we got to the burning of Atlanta. Instead of seeing this epic scene: I was viewing something slightly less epic: I was SOOOOO sick. Our romantic first Valentine’s Day was abruptly ended and he had to take me home without so much as a good night’s kiss. And yet he still married me. He’s great like that. Last year he had to be out of town for work, so I celebrated a lonely hearts Valentine’s at Red Robin with just me and the kids. It turned out that he was going to be out of town AGAIN this year over Valentine’s Day. Grrrr. But what’s a girl to do? The kids and I did the best to make the most of it anyway. I bought each kid a new Valentine’s Day outfit. I grabbed the one for Bridget first, which meant, of course, that every kid had to have one. Paul’s is my very very favorite. It’s very hard to find a Valentine shirt that looks manly, but this is it. I just want to squeeze him every time he wears it. In the past I’ve handmade each of our valentines, but since we’re in the middle of showing our house, I swore off all stressful and/or messy crafting projects. So this year’s valentines were much simpler, but still very cute. I made a topper for Paul’s valentines that said “You’re so Kool” and he picked out two packets of Kool-Aid for each valentine. We put them in a clear treat bag and stapled them shut. Done. Averi found some flocked valentines in the dollar spot at Target that she wanted to buy with her own money. She colored them herself. We grabbed some chocolate hearts, put them in the same clear treat bags, and stapled them shut. Done. Katie picked out some sugar cookies from the store and I found the topper online. Treat bags, staples, done. Told you I took the easy path this year. We ate heart pancakes for breakfast and called our families on Facetime to wish them a happy day. In the afternoon we delivered the valentines to all their primary classmates. We wound up going to 18 houses. It took FOREVER, but the kids had a great time and everyone was so cheerful. We made the last stop at my friend Monique’s house and were planning on going to Dion’s for pizza. She took pity on poor, husbandless me and invited us to share in their Valentine’s Day dinner. It was so wonderful. She has girls that are Katie and Averi’s age (and Bridget’s, too!), and Paul idolizes Carter. Boys in a sea of girls have to stick together, even if they are at least three years apart. We had heart-shaped pizzas and delicious dessert fondue and the kids had a great time playing together. Monique and I got to keep each other company, since her husband had to go to Young Mens. Thank you, Frosts, for letting us crash your dinner! We had a blast. It turned out to be a surprisingly nice day, even without my sweetheart. He made up for it by bringing me a necklace, though. I guess I’ll keep him.

You are a Pirate

I may have shared this ages ago, but it's worth showing again. I so wish they still sold this soundtrack. And again, I wish grown-ups could dye their hair pink and not look ridiculous.

Marty McFly is back

For those of you that may have forgotten, Marty McFly is Michael J. Fox’s character in Back to the Future. And his sleeping habits are…notable. It appears our son has taken after him. In other sleeping news, how adorable is Bridget?   She had a bit of a diaper rash, so I let her bottom air out for a while after a bath. I had her play on our bathroom rug in case there were any “messes,” and I had to leave the bathroom for a bit to do something else around the house. When I came back, she had fallen asleep sucking on her finger with her cute tush in the air. Awww!!! She’s seriously the sweetest girl ever.

Beautiful baby Bridget

Since Bridget did not get any pictures in her gown on her blessing day, we had to do it a few weeks later when I had the time. Fortunately she still fit into the blessing gown, which was a relief. Bridget is six months old today. I can’t believe how quickly the time has gone. I am completely smitten. She has her mom (and the rest of her family, for that matter) wrapped around her little finger. Here’s a bit about her and what she’s doing: *She is an awesome sleeper. She never fusses when she’s put down, and she generally gets about 12 hours of solid sleep a night. She will wake up every once in a while (usually around five), but she’s really easy to get back down. *She’s slobbery. Really, really slobbery, and has been since she was little. She doesn’t spit up nearly as much as Averi did (I’m not sure if that’s possible), but she drools like crazy. No sign of teeth, though. *She eats anything and everything in sight. Her favorites are my hair (gross!), necklaces, large buttons, and the large knuckle of your thumb. *She sucks on her index finger instead of her thumb, and it’s incredibly adorable. *She’s super happy as long as she’s held, and there’s usually someone available to hold her. *She’s pretty tiny. I threw a dress on her as we were running out the door, and it wasn’t until we got to church that I realized it was HUGE. *She likes to blow raspberries. *She’s started to jabber in the past few weeks. *She’s had some rice cereal, but not much, since I’m lazy. She’s a great nurser, and has only had a bottle once when I went to the temple in October. *She’s not extremely generous with her laughs and smiles, but when she does share them it melts my heart. *She got up on her hands and knees for the first time today. Hopefully this isn’t a precursor to crawling! Rolling is about as mobile as I want her right now. *She loves Sophie the giraffe and her musical toy that hangs on her carseat. She’s also taken a liking to our cloth napkins, so we carry her “little napkin buddy” (as Paul calls it) around with us everywhere. *She is very loved by everyone in her family, and I don’t know what we would do without her.

First Lost Tooth

Katie lost her first tooth on January 16. She had been wiggling it all winter, and Grandpa J and her dad both offered to pull it out with pliers. Understand, Katie is a big fraidy cat. She’s a serious wimp, and I knew that pliers would be way too traumatic for her. She kept declining their offers, and then one day it was too much. She asked Aaron to pull out her tooth for her (ignoring my very vocal protests). We got out the video camera and prepared for a treasured family moment. Aaron began to pull, and at the first sight of blood she flipped out. She began bawling, acting as though Aaron had tried to kill her. So now instead of a cherished memory, Aaron has requested that the video be deleted so that no one else can witness him torturing his own children. Even though the tooth wasn’t fully out, it was now very loose, thanks to the plier fiasco (I told them so!!). The next day as she was watching a movie Katie wiggled it out by herself. This time there were no tears and very little blood, just a very happy girl. I had great plans to make a cute tooth fairy pillow for her tooth, but I deliberately boxed up all my craft supplies so that I wouldn’t be tempted to begin a big project while we’re trying to show our house. So no cute pillow, but the tooth fairy came nonetheless. Getting looser! Two shiny half dollars!

Trip to Utah

All of our family is in Utah. As in, everyone but us. Understandably, we’d love to get back to Utah someday so we didn’t feel so left out all the time. But I stopped feeling as bad when I realized that we spent TEN PERCENT of our time in Utah last year. Yep. One out of every ten days, give or take a few days. So I guess I can’t whine too much. The day after Christmas we had planned to drive up to Utah. What we didn’t plan on was how long it would take us to play with all our toys/eat all our leftovers/clean the house/pack. So at about four in the afternoon we moseyed on out the door and drove to Moab where we stayed the night in a hotel, courtesy of my dad’s Hilton points. Thank you, Amex. The kids loved it and voted that we do it every drive. Our vacation goal this trip was “Do Nothing.” And we did. Mostly. It was fabulous after running around the entire month of December. We watched no less than ten movies during our trip, four of them at the theaters (The Muppets, The Adventures of Tin Tin, Mission Impossible III, and Sherlock Holmes: all fantastic!!). We spent a night up at my parents’ gorgeous new townhome in Park City and became extremely jealous of how fantastic it was. If anyone’s looking for a place to stay in the Park City area, check it out. You will definitely not be sorry. For New Year’s Eve we broke our tradition of doing nothing and went with my family to the Hale Center Theatre. The play began at 10 in the evening, and at intermission they served a great buffet of hors d’oeuvres. They were in the middle of the play when the countdown began, and all the action stopped while we rang in the New Year. For the rest of the play, the actors had to act with dozens of balloons floating around the stage. It was a great evening. On New Year’s Day we blessed our sweet Bridget Elayne and our nephew Zae was blessed by his father. Bridget was rather old for a baby being blessed and looked massive next to little Zae, who was only a month old at the time (and had been born three weeks early). We had lots of family join us, and we had a wonderful afternoon. It was a bittersweet moment, knowing that this was going to be our last baby blessing. Bridget looked darling in the blessing gown that all three girls have been blessed in. I’ve spoken before about how I love cloth diapers, and one of the reasons that I love them so much is that we never have blowouts. Until her blessing day. The first blowout she’s ever had (quite an achievement at five months old) was in her blessing gown BEFORE pictures were taken. I tried to get it washed and dried in time, but it just wasn’t happening. But she’s still super cute. The Jorgensen clan. Somehow the Barnes family got out of getting a family shot, but they were there too. A just-for-fun shot showing how red my hair was. I love it this color, but it doesn’t last very long. The Church History Library has a special children’s exhibit going on right now that focuses on the church in Latino cultures. The price was right (can’t beat free!), so we took a trip downtown to check things out. It was definitely worth spending a few hours there. The kids had a blast; we boring adults tired long before they did. Designing their own quilt blocks. The kids got to dress up in traditional costumes and imitate dancers on the screen. Paul was surprisingly good at it. We were lucky to have my Grandma Davis with us. We love her so much! Ashley had work off so she got to play with us too. These wraps are the best things ever. Bridget was able to sleep nearly the entire time we were at the museum, and I was able to have both hands free to have fun. Paul fished off “Nephi’s Boat” nearly the entire time we were there. He would not leave that thing. And they CRASHED on the way home. Always a sign of a good trip. Final picture that I took from our trip: the girls in pink! Cousins Bridget and Emily hanging with Auntie Ashley. Emily looks exactly like her mom. It kills me every time I see her. While we were there we had many game nights, a second Christmas with my family, sleepovers at Hawksridge, fun tubing with Grandma and Grandpa (which resulted in a trip to the first aid tent—can an outing get any cooler than that?), sleepovers with Grandma J, many yummy dinners, and lots of fun just being together. We had so much fun on our trip with all of our family. We miss you all and want you to come and visit us soon!!

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day

For Christmas Eve we decided to follow New Mexican tradition and make tamales for our Christmas dinner. Holy cow, is that a time/labor intensive process! I’ve learned my lesson for next time—cook the meat the day before. That was the longest part. It took about five hours for our meat to braise in the oven, and that doesn’t include all the time spent actually making the tamales. They were delicious, though! I was trying to be all festive and whatnot and bought a glass of “bubbly” (aka Martinelli’s sparkling apple cider). Unfortunately, the glass bottle broke while Aaron was opening it. I wanted to see if it was possible for us to still drink it, but then Aaron informed me that there were shards of glass floating around in the cider. So, no then. It was about 8pm at this time and we were all starving. I’m afraid the news about the cider just pushed me over the edge. I about lost it and nearly had to leave the dinner table in a flood of tears. Yes, that is ridiculous. But I couldn’t help it. Fortunately I was able to pull it somewhat together and we had a very nice, late Christmas Eve dinner, without the Martinelli’s. After children went to bed, the real work began. Aaron and I built the kids a play kitchen for the kids for Christmas, and of course it wasn’t finished by Christmas Eve. So between finishing the kitchen and wrapping presents, we went to bed ridiculously late. But everything definitely looked amazing. Here was our view before we headed to bed on Christmas Eve: Yes, the bar clamp came off before kids were up on Christmas. Christmas morning came bright and way too early. We’ve got 9:00 church, which meant that we would have to wait until after church to open presents. The kids got their new Christmas outfits on and headed downstairs. They were thrilled to see everything that Santa had brought them and were fascinated with the kitchen. It was a resounding success. Apparently Bridget hadn’t been dressed at this point. She had a pretty new Christmas dress too. I didn’t get any good pictures of the kitchen. It’s got a fridge with four shelves (and came stocked with some felt food, thanks to Ikea); a four burner stove with knobs that turn; an oven with a plexiglass window to look inside; a sink (which was a dog bowl in a former life) with an actual faucet; a storage space under the sink for keeping pots and pans, covered by a tiered curtain with pom-poms (my favorite part); a handle to hang tea towels on; and a chalkboard for writing menus or grocery lists. It’s actually not quite finished in this picture. We attached a blue back so the food wouldn’t fall out of the fridge. I also have some cute ideas for making it even more adorable. I made a sausage and egg casserole in the crockpot the night before so that we could have a semi-traditional Christmas breakfast before we went to church. It turned out great—definitely will do that one again. I really enjoyed having church on Christmas. I didn’t think I would, but it was so nice to be spiritually fed before the chaos of present-opening ensued. The hula outfit for Katie’s American Girl doll, Kanani. Sophie the giraffe. She LOVES this thing. New outfit for her Belle doll. Averi wrote her gift tags herself. That reads “Mom” and “Averi.” With her new Bitty Twins. Their names are John and Julia, according to Averi. This was a Star Wars year for Paul. Check out all that Star Wars loot! He was so incredibly spoiled by everyone. The Star Wars Lego mini-figure Darth Vader clock is my favorite. And for Katie it was an American Girl year. Seriously, our kids are spoiled rotten. Check out those roller skates—aren’t they the cutest? This was the first year that we stayed home for Christmas, and I’m so glad we did. It was nice to start some new traditions with our family, and our kids loved being able to play with all their toys at home. We missed everyone being with us, but loved being at home. Fortunately we were able to leave for Utah the next day to spend two full weeks with our families!