She's here!

She's finally here! We are so excited to have Elizabeth with us and she is a wonderful baby! Here are some pictures from the hospital:

The proud grandma:

The even prouder grandpa:

Our little (or not so little any more...) family:

Note: her hair was not styled like that - it was just towel dried...

A quilt for Elizabeth

I put my other quilt project on hold (although it is almost finished - pinned and ready to quilt) to make a baby quilt for our baby on the way. A little less than seven weeks until she will be here!

When I had Austin, I made a dust ruffle and valence for the "nursery" out of some pretty green fabric and in the house we are now in, the valence is way too small for the window. So I decided to use it, with some new fabrics, to make Elizabeth a quilt. Here it is completed as a full shot and a close up:

I am thrilled with how it turned out! It is fun to have a little pink around...

How do you say I Love You?

Well Valentine's Day is being celebrated by so many people, very few of them happen to know that it happens to be our wedding anniversary. (It actually happens to also be my parents' anniversary and it is a wonderful thing to share with them!) This last Saturday was our fifth anniversary and it was a wonderful day! Our gifts to each other are not always very traditional, but they are thoughtful in ways that let each of us know how much we are truly loved by the other.

Besides adding another page to our anniversary book that I started as a wedding gift for Joseph, I gave him pillows this year. We got two new standard size pillows and two new king size pillows. It is important to note that our old pillows were extremely flat and well worn (read: pancake pillows). In fact, they have even been the subject of comments made by others who have seen our bed. When your pillows get so bad that they are commented on by others, you know they have seen better days. We are revelling in our new luxurious pillows and wondering what took us so long to get new ones.

Joseph got me two gifts this year. The first is the set of books that make up the Maisie Dobbs mystery series that I love so much. I was so excited! There are also several people who I told about this that are supremely jealous and that always feels a little good as well...

The second thing he got me is take-out from Bajio, which is one of my favorite places to eat. He got me the beef chimichanga, with all the ridiculous changes that I make to it that make it sooooo delicious. He got it all exactly right (not an easy feat with this one) and it was as wonderful as ever.

Then, after adult session of our Stake Conference, we got on Trax and headed to Salt Lake City for a magnificent concert! For Christmas, my parents bought us tickets to see The King's Singers in concert at Abravanel Hall in Salt Lake City. It was just amazing and so fun to be there with my siblings and parents and grandparents. They are great performers and we just marveled at what incredible musicians they are and how incredible it was to watch them.

All in all, it was a wonderful day, wonderful anniversary, and wonderful Valentine's Day. I love Joseph more every day that I thought I could ever love another person!

Poor packaging

Beginning when I was pregnant with Matthew, I have eaten perhaps an entire warehouse worth of Spiral Macaroni & Cheese. Not regular Macaroni & Cheese, mind you, but Spiral Macaroni & Cheese. Believe me, there is definitely a difference in how they taste - although my husband would disagree (then again, he can't tell that there is a difference in taste between many things such as skittles or other candies... he is certainly not to be trusted in matters of taste). Anyway, throughout the years of making Macaroni & Cheese - Spiral or otherwise - I have been continually vexed by the packaging. As you can see in the following picture, on the side of the box, at the top, there is a tab that reads: To Open Push Here.

Let me tell you something. It doesn't work. It never has worked. Perhaps it is operator error, but I have tried for years and years to use this method of opening the box, purely out of morbid curiousity these days, and it does not work. I always end up ripping open the top of the box, but never has pushing that tab ever worked. Does Kraft know about this? If so, how have they not fixed it after all these years? If not, why has the public not made it perfectly clear that this is a completely useless instruction?

{sigh...}

Rachel

This is the sweet new addition to my nieces and nephews (although only nieces thus far on my side of the family). Rachel was born on my mom's birthday, about a week and a half ago, and is so beautiful! She had a few health problems initially and had to stay at the hospital for almost a week but now she is doing fabulously. We are excited to have a cousin close in age to our baby, Elizabeth, who is due in about 2 months now.

On Monday, we had the fun opportunity to have all of my mom's grandchildren at her house and so I got to hold Rachel all I wanted to. Here is a fun picture of Rachel held by her favorite aunt (sorry Debby!):

Snow angels...inside?

Yesterday was a particularly trying day with our children. The worst thing that happened, however, was when I went downstairs to check on what they were doing and I found the office covered in all of the paper from our shredder (which was in desperate need of emptying, by the way). It was in the keyboard, on the TV, in the VCR/DVD player, in the book case, and covering every inch of the floor. This is a picture of a small section of the floor to demonstrate the level of frustration in cleaning it all up:

The clincher was that when I came in they told me how they were playing in the snow. They even provided examples by throwing "snowballs" at me, and did snow angels on the ground in it. Let's just say that after 3 1/2 hours of cleanup (they also tracked it all over the rest of the house) I did not think it was quite as funny as many of you may think it is. That is why I am blogging about it. I hope that someone will find humor in it...

PS We had church after this happened and as I was leaving Relief Society, I glanced back to make sure I hadn't left anything, and there were three or four small shredded pieces underneath my chair.

A night on the town!

Saturday Joseph and I were able to go up to Salt Lake City for a fun night out. We took Trax up and that was a very nice way to go - much less stressful for me and a first time on Trax for Joseph. We first went to one of our favorite restaurants up there, Biaggi's, that is located at the Gateway. We got two appetizers and a dessert to share. The stuffed mushroom appetizer is simply wonderful and we just adore the bananas foster for dessert. They also have great entrees, but we decided to just go with the appetizers and desserts for this occasion.

Then, we were given free tickets to the Utah Symphony this week and so we took Trax a couple of stops back to Abravanel Hall. The seats were incredible - we were very lucky to have been given these tickets. The first piece was Symphony No. 8 in B Minor (Unfinished) by Schubert. It was very good. The second piece was Piano Concerto No. 1 in G Minor, Op. 25 by Mendelssohn, with a guest pianist, Louis Lortie (see picture below). This was amazing! It was beautiful musically as well as incredibly engaging to watch. Louis Lortie was a fabulous performer and we were so glad to listen to and watch him play. We could have left then and been happy - and maybe we should have...

The last piece was Petrushka (1947 version) by Stravinsky. Let's just say that it wasn't our cup o' tea. It was about a Russian carnival and some of the happenings there, and although we are definitely music appreciators, the cacophonous sounds and "story" being told were not really that appealing to us.

The overall experience was marvelous, however, and we had a very pleasant night, although we were out much later than usual and we could feel it. Many thanks to our sister-in-law, Amy, for babysitting our children!