Circle of Joy Party

Partying sure is different when children are involved! What would be an intimate setting of seven or eight suddenly multiplies to three or four times that, once spouses and children are added in! I'm telling you, we're like rabbits!

Our parties also start and end a little earlier than they used to. In fact, our party was over by the time our parties used to start. Guests started arriving shortly before 6 PM and everyone had left by 8 PM. Bedtimes are very, very important.

This year Shallee offered her cute little house to host the party at. It has a nice fenced-in yard and she has a decent-sized living room. Our family was the first to arrive and after a few minutes we were began to wonder if anyone else was going to show up. Luckily, most did!

Shallee and Rachel A.

Becky couldn't make it because she was sick. I didn't really give Cristina enough notice. And my brother had class. Other than that, we all showed up. All 22 of us! That's right, 14 adults and 8 children. Let's see if I can name them all... Amber, Scott, and Andy; Kristi, Rachel, and Kimberlee; Joy, Joe, Karen, and Rachel; Me, Andrew, and Rachel; Shallee and Dan; Shaille, Casey, Matthew, and Kelsi; Rebekah and Nathan; and Matt.


The weather was good enough that we were able to eat outside, although it did get a little chilly so we ended up moving inside.



Shallee let the kids look at her rats. Our Rachel was a little nervous about them. She would walk right up to the cage and stick her fingers inside but when the rats would come up to sniff them she would jump and scream. Andy was definitely in his element. Karen and Rachel D. were a little braver than our Rachel, but not near as brave as Andy. Matthew just isn't afraid of anything.

Rachel points to Faye

The kids were definitely the stars of the party. They were so funny. A little shy at first, perhaps, but that's because we don't get together all that often--Joy lives in North Carolina, for crying out loud! They all warmed up to each other pretty fast.

Karen, hiding behind her hands

Matthew, Rachel D. and Karen were off paling around on the staircase and they thought it would be a good idea to jump down them. Matthew took the first jump and ended up running into the living room to get some hugs and kisses from his daddy.


This made the girls wonder if it was such a good idea. Karen's turn was next.

"Don't jump, Karen," said Joy.

"Don't jump," said Joe.

"I jumped!" wailed Matthew.

Karen jumped. She wound up in her daddy's lap, crying too.

With no one to egg her on, Rachel D. began to wonder if jumping was such a good idea afterall. She came to ask her mommy.

"It's dangerous," warned Kristi.

Yes, Rachel, please note exibit A and B, howling up a storm. It's definitely dangerous.

Matthew never really did recover from "jumping" down the stairs. They had to go home. He was up way too late the night before, playing with his aunt and uncle. Casey and Shaille arived last night from Oregon--they drove--so it was much too exciting to go to bed. Since he had stayed up so late he just couldn't compose himself.

As they were just getting ready to walk out the door, Karen came up to say goodbye to Matthew.

"Give Karen a hug," Casey and Shaille prompted.

Matthew looked around and then ran over to Dan and gave him a big hug.

Dan (Shallee's husband), Kristi, and Kimberlee

"That's not Karen!" Dan had never been mistaken for a little girl before. He was shocked.

Matthew looked around and found Matt. He gave him a big hug.

"That's not Karen, either,"

Matthew gave our Rachel a hug, and just about everyone else a hug but he just would not hug Karen. She was a little miffed and had to go sit on Joe's lap again, but she got over it pretty quickly.

"Don't worry," Joe consoled her, "One day you'll be pretty and boys won't ignore you anymore."

Rachel was excited after Matthew and Rachel D. left because that meant that Karen didn't have anyone else to play with but her. She was a little hands-on, but having been scolded for trying to poke Karen's eyes when they first arrived she was relatively gentle. She patted Karen's head a lot, but was gentle enough that Karen didn't seem to mind.


Soon, though, both Rachel and Karen started acting like it was bedtime. Rachel A. was already asleep in her carseat. Joy left and then we helped clean up a bit and left Shallee and Dan to their own devices. They don't have kids yet, so they probably had time to throw another party!

It was so much fun to get to see everyone. This will probably be the last "Circle of Joy" party that I get to go to for a long time! I hope we keep having them, though!

Lonely Eggs

There is a certain library book that hardly ever seems to find its way back into the library book bin. Mostly it fills its time by following Rachel around throughout the day. She's been dragging it, and her favorite blankey, onto my lap at every opportunity she spies. I have a hunch she'd take this book to bed with her, if I'd let her.

It's called Whose Chick are You? and she absolutely loves it. We've already read it 4 or 5 times this morning.

She loves the voices that mommy does. And she loves the voices that daddy does. We both do different voices and read it different ways. It doesn't really matter how you read it, as long as it's read.

Rachel loves the pictures. And (Bonnie will like this) she's starting to like ducks! We have a stuffed duck and Rachel went and dug that out of the toy box yesterday and brought it, and the book, and her blankey into the kitchen. She dropped the duck and the blankey, got up on her knees, and started banging my legs with the book. If that's not a hint, I don't know what is.

So I stopped making cookies to cuddle Rachel on my lap, of course reading Whose Chick are You?, while she cuddled her little duckie. When we were finished, we read it again. And then again. She gets really into the story, even getting a little emotional when the little chick doesn't know who he belongs to. She calls out, "Mama, mama!" with me and then will clap her hands when the mommy swan finds her little chick.

After reading it that many times, it was high time to get back to my cookies. I'm in the middle of making another cake like the one I made for Andrew's graduation, so I needed to bake more mountain cookies.

This particular cookie recipe calls for only one egg. I opened the fridge and pulled out the carton. There were four eggs nestled together on one side of the carton, ostracizing a lone egg on the opposite end. I opted to save the lone egg from his woeful state of isolation. I knew full well he wouldn't find his mommy. So I picked him up and banged him on the counter. As usual, I lifted him up over the bowl, stuck my thumbs in the crack, and tried to pull his shell apart.

It wouldn't budge.

I pulled harder while trying to force my thumbs through.

Still no action.

I remembered that Andrew had previously had trouble breaking through the membrane of an egg from this carton. He poked through it with a fork.

I grabbed a knife and poked through what I thought was the membrane. It was hard the whole way through. I had grabbed a hard boiled egg.

"That's why he was all alone in there," explained Andrew.

In my family we write "HB" on the side of the carton that harbors the hard boiled eggs. How was I supposed to know the egg was hardboiled just because it was sitting alone.

I used a different egg, which cracked open just fine, and was able to get two batches of cookies in and out of the oven unburned. Things did not bode well for the last batch of cookies because I was so busy reading and re-reading Whose Egg are You? that I forgot to check on them until I smelled smoke...

Rachel was not pleased when I interrupted her story to save my cookies!

Too many bosses spoil the office

Working at BYU, you typically have more bosses than you know what to do with. When I worked in the cataloging department is was doing metadata, labeling, and working with special collections. That meant that I was under Kayla, Naomi, Pam, Bob, and Karla. I had to remember who to go to for which questions and was never quite sure who was supposed to approve my timecard or verify my schedule.

When I worked in acquisitions it was just as bad. I was a reciever and was the student in charge of processing all gifts and donations. I was under Becky and Liz and Kiersten, but could also ask questions to Heather or Josh or Deb. If I was really desperate I could always consult with Bill.

Quite confusing, if you ask me.

Andrew finds himself in the same boat, especially since he, like me, is working a variety of positions concurrently. He works at the Information Commons Reference desk, he works as a computer proctor, and he works as a Multimedia Lab Consulant. He also has a lot of different bosses for each of his duties.

This can come in handy sometimes. Like today when Andrew and some coworkers got their hands on some caution tape and got Cyndee to let them into Michael's office.


Good to know he's hard at work all day while I'm at home goofin' around...

Be Prepared!

We filled out Andrew's FAFSA form last night. Even with the Fellowship he was awarded, we'll probably end up having to take out a loan to cover the rest of his tuition.

The form seemed a lot more involved this time around than it was before. We figured that it was either because it was for a loan instead of a grant or that it was for graduate school instead of undergraduate education. Either way, they seemed to ask us a lot more questions than they did in the past.

After answering a few easy questions, like whether Andrew is male or female, we had to get our tax forms out and go over them several times to find all the answers for the tricky questions. We even had to break out the calculator a few times. Is it really supposed to be that complicated?

Anyway, after about 45 minutes we had finally filled in the form, to the best of our knowledge, that is. We clicked "next" and this question popped up:

Are you a preparer?

I stared at it. It was a yes-or-no question and yet I couldn't think of a good answer for it. I started to analyze my lifestyle.

Am I a preparer? That's a good question. Let's see.

We have some food storage. Sure, it isn't what it could be but we don't have all that much room to keep food so a year's supply is out of the question. We've probably got a few months worth of food. Maybe. So we're relatively prepared in that department.

Andrew was an Eagle Scout. Aren't scouts supposed to be prepared? He still carries a pocket knife, which really has come in handy a few times. He keeps band-aides in his wallet. And I'm pretty sure he knows how to tie a square knot.

Before I leave the house I usually remember to check to see if we have diapers, wipes, and a change of clothes for Rachel. Actually, I'm often well over-stocked when we leave the house, carrying half my weight in baby hud. And I wear an extra hair elastic on my wrist just in case I want to put my hair up.

And I'm studying Arabic. That's great preparation for moving to Egypt. Shoot--I've already started packing!

Yes, I decided, We're definitely preparers.

Still, I wasn't quite sure if that was what the question was asking, so I decided to ask Andrew what it meant. He seemed much more sure of his answer.

"What does that even mean?" I asked innocently, trying to pretend that the cyclone of thoughts I had just had never happened.

He pointed to the small print and patronizingly answered, "A preparer is someone who prepares forms for a living."

Oh, I see. We're definitely not preparers.

Trouble with the in-laws

The day started off just right: Andrew took Rachel and let me sleep in while he made me some breakfast-in-bed. I had a shower...by myself, which mean that Rachel didn't turn the water too cold or too hot. I got dressed, nursed Rachel until we both fell asleep and slept almost until it was time for church. Then we went to church.

After church we went to Andrew's parents' house for dinner. His grandparents were there and we wanted to visit with them some more since we hardly got a chance to at the airport.

Rachel was, of course, up to her little tricks. She's normally pretty shy around new people, and takes quite some time to warm up to people she knows sometimes. Since her great-grandparents are new to her, everyone else was safe territory. She would snuggle with whoever was holding her, smiling her coy little smile.


She even willingly went to Grandpa. Of course, he had stopped by on Saturday to take her to the park, thereby forging a friendship with her. Now you know, if you want to be Rachel's friend, take her to the park and let her eat a handful of dirt or two.

We were having her show off her little tricks. She knows where eyes, ears, mouths, and noses are and will point to them if you ask her to...but only if she's feeling motivated. She was sitting on Grandpa's lap and Andrew asked her where his nose was.

In response she stuck out her little pointer finger and waved it around, blatantly refusing to point to his nose.

"Come on," Andrew coaxed, "It's right there! How can you miss it?"

"Hey!" said Reid, offended, "What are you saying?"

"I'm just quoting Nancy," Andrew passed the buck.

Reid turned to look at me.

"I used to like you..." he said, turning away snobbishly.

"No!" I tried to correct, "I wasn't saying that about your nose! I was saying it about Andrew's nose!"

I'm not sure that fixed things.

Andrew and I often gently tease each other back and forth about a number of things. He's made a jab or two about my toe-thumbs and I sometimes make remarks about his nose.

He deserves it. Anyone who can say, and I quote, "The baby just stuck, like, her whole hand up my nose!" deserves to be teased about the size of their nose. (But it's a really cute, big nose, honey!)

Andrew sporting his mother's bike helmet

But as my dad said last night when Rachel was searching for his nose, "How can you miss it? It's right in front!"

So really, whether a nose is big or small, it's kind of hard to miss.

Two Steppin'

Any day now Rachel is just going to take off on us. She is now taking two or three steps in a row before she decides to get down and crawl. I can't believe how fast she's picking this walking thing up. My friend Heather suggested that we get a push toy for her, but we decided against that. We didn't want to encourage her too much; she is only nine months old, after all.

Of course, Rachel found her own push toy anyway. She's been using the kitchen chairs as walkers for about a month now. She pushes them around the dining room, and sometimes ventures off into the hallway. If she crashes into something she either turns the chair, tries to walk backwards with the chair, or just keeps pushing forward with all her little might.

Mother's Day Preview

Mother's Day has already been great and it isn't even here yet!

On Thursday night, Rachel and I crashed the Northridge 2nd ward mother/daughter activity. Karen is on the Relief Society committee and she helped plan a beautiful Mexican fiesta. I can never say no to Mexican food...

Rachel had a few firsts that night: watermelon and balloons. She enjoyed both very much.



We also learned that she doesn't like sombreros. She hated when we put one on her head and was very nervous when Grandma tried to introduce her to a poster of some sombrero-wearing men. It was kind of like graduation, really. She just doesn't like hats, I guess.

Ew! Get it off my head!

We had a lot of fun. It was nice to spend some time with Karen and Emily and to see some of our friends and family from that ward. Actually, we don't have a lot of family in that ward, besides Andrew's family, but we got to see Kathy Conrad, so that was nice. And Rachel got to see her little friend Lela.

Tonight Andrew took me out for dinner at the Brick Oven. He was nominated as the student employee of the year a while ago and was awarded a gift certificate and he decided to spend it on me!

Rachel was excited to get to go out. It was a little cold/windy/rainy today so we didn't spend a lot of time outside. She gets cabin fever rather easily so she was thrilled when I pulled out the car seat.

We're going somewhere!

We sat down and started looking at the menu. Our waitress gave Rachel a package of crackers so we opened them up and gave her a whole cracker to see what she would do. She held it in her hand, took a little nibble, and then took a great big bite and chewed it up. She's getting so good at managing her food.

When we were just about finished, my cousin Heather walked by! She lives in Chicago and we haven't seen her for such a long time! She's been in town visiting with friends (weddings and funerals and the like). I was feeling sad that I didn't get the chance to see her because she stopped by to see my mom and David on campus...but then she just popped up at Heaps! We were glad that we decided to eat out tonight instead of tomorrow night!

Me and Heather

I can't wait to see what the next few days bring. Can't every day be Mother's Day?

Volde-who?

Earlier this week Andrew was telling me about an article in the New York Times comparing Harry Potter to Judaism, only he didn't start out by saying either Harry Potter or Judaism. In fact, we were really talking about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. I recently finished reading Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid and I've had a lot of questions while reading it, so I ask them to my resident expert on the topic: Andrew.

I wasn't really prepared to be talking about Harry Potter characters since I was still trying to keep the Arabic names straight in my head: Hamas, Fatah, Hezbollah, Abbas, Hussein, Arafat, Meir, Olmert. The names weren't new to me, not necessarily, but it was still a lot of information for me to keep track of. Who liked which policies and why, who bombed who and why, who wasn't talking to who and why...

I'm typically not a political kind of a girl. But I need to read up on it because otherwise I will get totally lost in every conversation we ever have in Egypt. We're always told not to discuss religion or politics with locals, but seriously, you jump in a cab in the Middle East and you're asked where you're from and, once they find out you're from America, if you like Bush or not. Then a whole slew of questions will arise about your opinion on his policies on the Middle East.

If they know where or what Utah is, they'll usually ask you if you're a Mormon. They like Mormons for the most part, I've found. We have similar standards. Not identical, but similar.

Anyway, conversations regarding politics are almost impossible to avoid so I think it's probably best to be a little more informed than I was the last time we were over in that part of the world.

So, there we were, getting ready for bed. I was probably ranting about some policy that I didn't agree with since I don't agree with many of America's international relations policies of late. Probably I was ranting about walls and how they're no good for communication. The Berlin wall was a bad idea. The iron curtain? Bad idea. Putting up a fence between California and Mexico? Bad idea. Putting up walls around Palestine? Bad idea. Fencing in our future backyard in the hopes of containing Rachel? Now, there's a good idea.

For the most part I think that walls hinder international communications, and thus peace. For some reason it just reminds me of fencing in animals on a farm, and I don't think that people should be treated like that.

Yes, that was probably the rant that I was on. That one or another one.

Out of the blue Andrew says, "So they say that Jesus is Voldemort."

I looked at him and blinked stupidly.

"Who's Voldemort?" I asked.

He started laughing at me.

"No, seriously! I can't remember!" I tried to maintain my dignity, "Was he that one leader in Syria back in..."

He started laughing harder.

"What are you talking about?" I asked, "Who's Voldemort? I know that name! Voldemort, Voldemort, Voldemort, Voldemort, Voldem... I've got it. He's from Star Wars...or Trek...no, definitely Star Wars."

Andrew started laughing even harder.

"Oh, wait, no! That's Darth Maul, or something like that. Darth Vader! That's who I was thinking of...no. Who's Voldemort?"

By this time Andrew is crying tears of mirth.

"Voldemort...Voldemort...Voldemort....Voldemort..." I said over and over again, trying to stimulate a memory of sorts. It finally worked, "HARRY POTTER!"

Andrew collapsed. After he and I had recovered from our laugh attack I had Andrew explain what he meant.

I'm just glad that He Who Must Not Be Named isn't real because, you know, saying his name summons his little minions to deliver his ill-tidings. We'd really have been in for it after I said his name that many times!

We need an olympic-sized bathtub

I really wish that the crypto bacteria in the pools here would suddenly disappear so that I could take my baby swimming. For now, Rachel just goes swimming in the bathtub, which she finds entertaining enough.

She certainly is a handful, whether in the tub or out. She's up and down and all around...all the time. She never stops moving. I've never seen a baby who likes the water quite as much as Rachel, who has no problem submerging her whole face to blow bubbles and will gladly let the shower spray her in the face. She splashes and squeals and crawls around in circles. The only thing she doesn't like is floating on her back, so we practice that every time she takes a bath.

And now for an entourage of pictures...

What? I'm teething.

Pretty fountain!

SPLASH!

Do it again, Dad!

See my finger, see my thumb, see my toothie? You'd better run!

If you don't mind, I'm trying to play here...

I see you, Daddy!

This isn't sooo bad...

Just kidding! Bring me up! Bring me up!

Yummy sponge!

I love bath time!

Oregano, thyme, basil, and pepper...

There are certain times of the day when Rachel thinks she will die if she doesn't eat right away. She'll start clawing at me and nipping at my shirt. She actually can get quite embarrassing when she really wants to eat. She'll refuse to sit normally on my lap and will instead lean as far sideways as she can, while begging for food with her mouth and grunting at me.

Tonight she decided she was starving to death just as we were starting dinner so I abandoned Andrew in the kitchen in order to feed Rachel.

We made tortellini soup and focaccia bread. Actually, all I did was get out a can of corn and a can of tomatoes. Andrew did the rest because I was, as we all know, feeding Rachel.

We'd never made such and adventurous meal before so we were following recipes we found on the internet. This meant that Andrew did a lot of running back and forth from the computer to the kitchen chanting directions and lists of ingredients while he followed each step.

He was just leaving the computer for the fourth time when I noticed that Rachel's nails were in dire need of a trim.

"Will you get me the clippers, hon?"

"Oregano, thyme, basil, and pepper...what?"

"The baby clippers. Will you get them for me, please?"

"Oh, uh, yeah," he said,"Oregano, thyme, basil, and pepper. Oregano, thyme, basil, and pepper..."

He continued chanting down the hall and to the bathroom. Oregano, thyme, basil, and pepper! Oregano, thyme, basil, and pepper. Oregano, thyme, basil, and I had a brilliant idea.

Andrew presented me with the nail clippers, still chanting, "Here you go! Oregano, thyme, basil, and pepper!"

"Thanks!" I sang out and then overpowered his chant with a chorus of, "Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme!"

"Oh, no!" he said, "You didn't! Parsley, sage, oregano, and thyme? No! Oregano, thyme, basil, and sage. No!"

I couldn't remember the original ingredients anymore either, but I tried to help, "There was pepper...and sage, rosemary and thyme?"

"Argh!" said Andrew and he ran back to the computer.

"Oregano, thyme, basil, and pepper!" he said as he hurried back into the kitchen.

Sometimes I am capable of wonderful, horrid things!