April 07 Movie

Our Crazy Week

Well we just had a crazy week! We had some friends from our ward in Wyview come up to Utah (from Arizona) and stay with us from Monday until Wednesday. It was so much fun to see them and hang out again! What made it crazy was that as soon as they left I had to wash all the linen and towels, re-make all the beds, and re-clean the house, because Samuel's family arrived that night! It's a good thing I thrive on stress! :)


The fabulous news is that SAMUEL GRADUATED!! BYU graduation was Thursday and Friday. Thursday was Commencement, and Vice President Dick Cheney came and gave a fantastic address. That was cool. Next week on the monthly movie I think I'll put some clips of him in. Friday was Convocation, where the students walk and actually get their diplomas. The neat part about that was that (since my dad is a VP at BYU), Sam's father-in-law and mission president actually got to present him with his diploma!


In the midst of all this stress, I decided enough was enough with Seara's mullet, and I cut her hair. Much to my dismay, I forgot to take a pre-haircut picture. But I'm trying to forget about that. Her new cut is cute, but much harder to style! Seara also got four new teeth this week, which means she was not a happy camper. Why is it that she only gets her teeth in sets of four?!

Elijah is almost ready to roll over from his back to his tummy. He just needs to learn to swing his top leg over for added weight. I tried to tell him that, but I get the feeling he didn't really understand! :) He has also learned how to take his pacifier out (but not put it back in) and how to chew on his thumb (but not suck it). All of this means that he has now acquired the ability to upset himself, and still needs me to calm him.

Last, but not least, Samuel tells me that he has finally decided what he wants to do for grad school, and that he is nearly 100% certain that this is what he wants. The only problem is, he won't tell me what it is. Gee, I just can't imagine why! ;)

Strange Parents

So the pictures of Samuel and I on this blog are usually boring, so today we decided to spice things up. Samuel hid in Seara's crib under her blankets and as she came in the room he started calling her name. It was so funny because Seara was looking under the crib, in the closet, out the door - she couldn't figure out where he was coming from! Once she found him she took advantage of the situation and got him to read her a book. So that explains that picture. The one of Lije and I is just being weird. He thought it was pretty funny! Then we have Sam making Elijah laugh, and Seara eating popcorn and laughing at me singing to her.

Well, we planted nine trees and three shrubs yesterday! I am so excited because our house is starting to look like it is lived in! Our backyard is still a lake, so we can't do sprinklers, topsoil, fence, or sod yet, but I'm crossing my fingers that our backyard will be leveled in the next few weeks. Soon enough we will have a beautiful yard! And when we do, I'm going to take a picture and put it on the blog next to a pic of the house before landscaping. I'm not doing any pics of the new trees because I want good shock factor with the comparison. Just you wait!

Our calling in the ward is as Spanish-speaking Ward Missionaries. About a year ago the stake president disintegrated the Spanish Branch and in the area where most of the Latinos live, he turned the ward into a bi-lingual ward. Well, since our area is new, as we grew the Latinos here went over to that ward rather than our ward. Now, however, there are about 20 active families in our neighborhood going to that ward, and the stake pres and bishop want us to make our ward bi-lingual as well. So, Samuel and I began a Spanish Gospel Doctrine class and we've been teaching that for a few months. Last week the Bishop called a teacher for our class, so now we'll teach Gospel Principles when we have investigators coming to the ward. The Bishop also called four translators who will be trained over the next couple weeks, and soon we'll have sacrament meeting translated into Spanish. We're also working with the couple who does the Sacrament Program to make it bi-lingual. Pretty exciting! Our only problem now is getting those families to come back to our ward - they now have callings and friends, so it makes it hard to leave. We have three that have transitioned over and are working on the rest. I'm excited to get all this in place, though, because once we have a solid base in the ward we'll be able to actually do missionary work and have somewhere secure to bring them!

Well, let's see ... Seara is getting to be a bit more of a tantrum-throwing toddler, but she still answers yes more often than no, so its not too bad yet. She likes to make deals and have you say "Okay?" so she can answer back, "Okay!" She also loves buttons, which she carefully annunciates as, "buh-Tons." Her greatest treasures are rocks. She gathers them whenever we go on walks, and when we get home she insists on keeping one and walking around the house with it. Yesterday our Home Teacher came to help plant the trees and brought his two year old daughter. I'm not sure how she did it, but Seara managed to get that poor little girl to stand there with her hand stretched out in a cup shape, while Seara filled her hands with rocks.

Elijah is rolling over quite a bit now. He only goes from stomach to back, but he's almost ready to go from his back to his stomach. He really likes to play with Seara, although I'm not sure why. Yesterday I was cleaning my bathroom and I had laid Lije on his tummy on the floor in my bedroom while I did the toilet. Well, when I came back Elijah had rolled onto his back, and Seara had stacked all the pillows from my bed on top and him and was trying to climb up on the pillows. Poor squished kid! And, when Elijah is in his swing, Seara always runs over to stop the swing. She'll stack up all these toys on the tray right in front of Lije, and then get upset when he touches them! Funny kids!

Trees & Talking

We had a pretty fun week. After all the easter candy Seara got from Easter - and that I ate - I felt motivated to start running! We got a super nice double bike trailer/jogging stroller and on Monday began our training for the 1/2 marathon we're running in August. Since I am starting from being completely sedentary, our training is really basic right now - we run three minutes, walk three minutes, and repeat that five times. Its not challenging at all for Samuel, so he gets the kids in the stroller. :) The first couple days I did great, but on Friday I felt like I was going to die (after running three minutes!) It wasn't until the end of the jog that I remembered that I had forgotten to use my inhaler before I left. That made me feel better. Its not that I'm terribly wimpy, I just have asthma! :)

On Saturday we had a busy day. We got this gigantic ingleman spruce tree from a friend for free because it was slightly damaged on one side (the back). The tree is about 10 feet tall and weighed almost a ton. Literally. So Samuel spent about five hours digging a 4 by 4 foot hole in our hard-as-rock clay soil. Then we had a few neighbors come over and help him get the tree in the hole and fill it in. That took another three hours (with help!) It was quite then intense project, but I sure am proud of my tree! Plus, we made a lot of new friends because of it - all during church the next day people kept coming up to us and commenting on the tree. Samuel is so embarrassed because he didn't realize he was on display! :) As Samuel was finishing up the hole, I ran to the store with Lije to get some fertilizer and mulch, and left Sease to play around the yard. Well, when I came back she was covered in mud from head to toe, it was so funny! Leave it to dad to be such an attentive babysitter!

Seara is talking up a storm. She is developmentally almost a year ahead in her speech. (Which makes me feel better since she didn't roll over until she was crawling!) I attribute it to one of two things: 1) she has a gigantic head (98th percentile since she was 4 months old) or else 2) her mom has been a chatterbox since, well, I learned to talk myself. When Lija wakes up from his nap she'll come up to me before I even hear him and tell me "baby lija crying". Periodically throughout the day she'll tell me "daddy at work", "hug Tanna", and "go outside". She'll tell me "go poop" when she needs to use the restroom, and that is followed by "it hurts", which means she needs a diaper change (the remnants of a terrible diaper rash). She says about 40-50 words now and in the last two weeks has started using plurals. She is still learning how to do plural correctly, though, because she now calls hair "hairs". It is very funny. Seara loves "songs" - her favorites are "beam" and "popcorn". She knows the songs pretty well, too. She'll start "beam" for me by singing "Jesus" and when I finish the first verse she start the second by singing "happy". With "popcorn" she'll fill in the end words (and a couple in the middle) -

I looked out the window and what did I ... 'see'
Popcorn popping on the apricot ... 'twee'
Spring had brought me such a nice ... 'su-prise'
Blossoms blooming right before my ... 'eyes'
I could take an arm full and make a ... 'tweat'
A popcorn ball that would smell so ... 'sweet'
'It wasn't weewy wo' but it seemed to ... 'be'
'Popcorn' popping on the apricot 'twee'

Oh, and today as I wrote this we opened up her cousin's blog and looked at their pictures. She saw one cousin and said "Tanna!" and I had to explain to her that that was not Tanna, that is Gabi. Well, Seara immediately started practicing saying "Ga-bi" and throughout the rest of the pictures would point Gabi out and tell me "Ga-bi". I was impressed that she could even tell her apart from her other cousins!

Elijah is learning how to intentionally grab at things. Samuel is so patient and will sit with Lije for 30 minutes at a time holding out things for Elijah to practice grabbing. He is ticklish now, which makes for endless fun for mom. It cracks me up! Oh, the funniest thing happened yesterday! Lije is the kind of baby that won't just fall asleep anywhere. When he is tired he will cry and cry until you bundle him up, give him his pacifier, and lay him in his bed. Well, nap time happens to be right when sacrament meeting starts, so I bundled him up and popped the pacifier in, but Lije just did not want to be held! It was too bright to be laid down on the bench, so I finally decided to lay out a blanket and put him with his head under the bench and his body sticking out where I could see him. (Luckily we sit on the left side and only one couple with no kids sits behind us.) Anyway, he laid there quietly, drifting in and out of sleep, for the entire meeting block! It was amazing!

Easter Weekend

We just had a really fun Easter weekend! On Saturday we had lunch with some friends who have a daughter Seara's age and are expecting a son next month. After lunch we all went to the Living Planet Aquarium in Sandy. We saw some pretty cool fish, including Tiger Sharks, and even got to see a gigantic squid be fed. They fill a Mr. Potato Head with food, then give it to the squid, who proceeds to pull out all the arms, legs, etc. and finally open the back and suck the food out. They even had an aquatic petting zoo, where Seara got to touch a starfish, a sea cucumber, a sting ray, and a few other fishy things. It was really cool!

On Sunday we went to my parents house for Easter dinner. Seara squealed in delight when her cousins Savanna and Makenna walked in. She calls them both "Tanna" and talks about them almost every single day (she tells me "Tanna bye-bye" and "Tanna Pama gone" - Pama is her name for both my parents, and we usually see "Tanna" at their house). Anyway, at dinner Seara and Makenna were sitting at a little table eating together and it was so funny because Seara just sat there chatting incessantly at Makenna, who ignored her completely and crawled around the table, playing with their food. After dinner we had a little Easter Egg hunt. Seara refused to hold her basket, so I had to follow behind her with it. She really liked finding eggs and putting them in her basket, but when it came to the candy inside she wasn't too interested. She either opened the egg and dumped the contents out, or else she put the candy in her mouth, chewed it a bit, then spit it out. Needless to say, I took the eggs away really fast.

Elijah didn't really care about the aquarium, although he enjoyed the two hours he spent being held in the carrier. He also didn't care about the Easter Egg Hunt. He has, however, begun following a predictable schedule, which I am thrilled about! He rolled over for the first time on Friday, then he did it again today. I have yet to see him do it, I just put him on his stomach and go about my business, and when I look back at him he's on his back. He and Seara are becoming good friends, in fact right now he is laying on his back, and Seara is sitting next to him "reading" a book to him. Pretty cute!

Oh, the pics are some we got taken a month ago - Elijah is 3 mo., Seara 18. :)