Christmas Wish List

Since you've been asking, here's all I want for Christmas from my Amazon wish list. We opened Christmas presents last night and Brent gave me a Black and Decker Food Processor (which was #1 on my list) and some simple but elegant glass serving bowls. Now I can serve vegetables and mashed potatoes in something other than the pots they were cooked in! I feel so grown-up.



The girls and I got headphones for our flight to Utah. They practiced wearing them this morning while watching Curious George. I've loaded the computer with Sesame Street podcasts so I'm hoping we're good to go! We also gave the girls Color Wonder by Crayola so they can color and I don't have to worry about them destroying anything. They also got several books that I'm excited to read with them.


Brent got his #1 from his wish list, too: Sketchbook Pro, which is a art studio program where you can free hand your drawings with his tablet computer. It has really cool effects for adding color, like airbrushing. I'm hoping he'll let me fiddle with it too! Other things Brent's interested in include a book light for reading at night, new sheepskin slippers like the kind from L.L. Bean.

Laptime Songs for Mommies

This month has been crazy busy around here. We enjoyed a wonderful Thanksgiving with a couple other med school families. We've been doing the library thing and the church thing and the playing thing. Sammi has recently become obsessed with Dora. So we do the Dora thing during Elli's naps.
But the reason I've been most busy is I've been putting together my very first eBook! Well, it's not just mine! Brent did an awful lot of the design work and the technical stuff I couldn't do. But we worked together and got it done. It's all I envisioned it would be. I won't bore you with any more details about it, but if you want you can check it out here.

Oh, and in case you haven't heard, I have a giveaway over at Because Babies Grow Up for a VTech Ride and Learn Giraffe Bike. Very exciting! Come enter to win it, please!

Now that this project is done, I'll get some cute pics of the girls up. I promise!

Last Pics from Halloween

These were from my camera that I took before we headed to our friends. If you look closely you can see the sparkles on Elli's eyelids.

Clean House

I didn't need Nicey Nash and her crew to get my house in shape. But I need need two days and a little (okay a lot of) help from my babysitter. Here are the results.

This is our house in Tennessee, from the inside. These images have never been captured before and I'd like to state for the record that they were ALL taken this morning. The only rooms you don't see are our bedroom, the office and the laundry room/downstairs bathroom. All of which still look like they've been hit by a tornado :)

Ah, but relish the clean. Isn't it beautiful?
This is the first room you wee when you enter our house. The toys are to the right and the seating area is to the left of the door.
At the top of the stairs, you enter the kitchen. Not as big as I originally remembered, but we enjoy the cozy feeling of working together in the kitchen.
The dining room is next to the kitchen. We are still working on the matching chairs we bought. The green ones only need to be primed, but the others needed to be stripped and sanded. Sheesh, that's been a lot of work!
This is the family room. We finally got the ottomans to match the couch. They also match the stairs in the corner and the window treatments Brent found.
This is the upstairs bathroom. I just mopped the floor! Go me :)
This is Elli's side of the girls' room.
This is Sammi's side of their room. You'll notice her pink cat from Uncle Kim. She still loves it. The fleece blanket folded up at the end of the bed is from my friend Anela and has flags on it. I love that blanket.
While running around taking pictures, Sammi ran around behind me smearing more and more blue yogurt on her face. What a character :)

Elli finally deciding to look AT me and smile. Thanks, darling!

Halloween 2009

Here are some pics from Halloween. Elli's costume was really warm so she only wore it when we were outside. It also happened to rain like crazy last night so we didn't take many pictures of the actually trick-or-treating. Sammi was confused when Brent brought her back to our friends' house. She said, "We can't be done yet. My bucket's not full of candy!" What a cutie :)

The First Frost

We woke up just before 7 this morning. It was still dark and Sammi said, "Is it still sleeping time?" Although I wanted to say yes and take us all back to bed, I explained that in the winter the sun comes up later. As it started to get brighter I noticed frost on the grass.

We bundled ourselves up and headed out for some fun. We had fun crunching on the grass and seeing how much ice had formed in different puddles of water. Then we decided to check Daddy's car and make sure he didn't have frost on his windows. Thank goodness for the carport, so we were safe :)

Wordless Wednesday: Door Knob Surprise

Check out the wild creation we found over at Because Babies Grow Up. Find other Wordless Wednesday posts at WordlessWednesday.com and 5 Minutes For Mom. Come back tomorrow for Tell Me Thursday.

Random Cute Pics-Again

One day Sammi had a late afternoon nap and was just not interested in bedtime. I braved it and decided to introduce her to life after she goes to bed: laundry! Oh, and I think we watched So You Think You Can Dance. I had her sort the clothes into two piles: Sammi's and Elli's. Then I had her sort her clothes into pants, shirts, dresses, sockes and underwear and pajamas while I started to fold Elli's clothes. After a bit I looked over and instead of just sorting her clothes, she was folding them. She made this beautiful collection of folded clothes on the little staircase we got from Brent's parents. I was so impressed.
This was during a long drive to Morristown to get our Tennessee driver's licenses. Brent was trying to study while we drove so we introduced the girls to the headphones. Elli was fascinated and not at all concerned she couldn't hear the movie!

Trip to the Knoxville Zoo

We love the Knoxville Zoo. Sammi loves it so much, in fact, that we haven't really seen anything else in Knoxville! So when Grandma Devine was visiting we just HAD to take her. Here are our adventures from this visit.
The Wee Play Zoo is like a mini Discovery Gateway Children's Museum centered on animal themes. Above Sammi is wearing a dress up hat for a seal or otter. Below she is dressed as a Vet and playing in the animal hospital room.
We also got to see the baby chimpanzee, George. He appears to be curious just like Sammi's favorite cartoon character.
I was so excited the lion was posed just perfectly for this regal shot. Lions are my favorite (next to cougars, of course!) and this was the best view of him we'd seen yet.
Sammi and Elli are turning into such sweet sisters and friends. They hold hands and take turns leading each other around. Sometimes they take my hand and we become a train. Such fun times.
Here's a rare shot: all three of us! Thanks, Mom. What's not so rare: we're all wearing the same color. That seems to happen frequently. Unfortunately, we forgot to get one of Grandma with the girls.

Cup of Dirt

I thought it would be fun to make "Cup of Dirt" for dessert one night. I made the chocolate pudding and poured it into bowls, added gummy worms and topped with crushed Oreo cookies. I put them in the fridge to get cold.





I wasn't sure how I was going to introduce the idea to Sammi, but the perfect moment presented itself. She was starting to fall asleep on the couch at about 5:30 which only spells disaster. In trying to wake her up, I told her we were having a special dessert after dinner. Intrigued she perked up and asked what we were having. I told her a cup of dirt.

She looked quite concerned and told me we don't eat dirt. I told her it was okay and I'd found a few worms to make it that much better. She spent from then until we presented the dessert saying over and over, "But we don't eat dirt, Mommy!" I started telling her she'd just have to see it before she decided. I thought once she saw it she would know it was a gummy worm and Oreos.

But I was wrong. She wouldn't even touch it! Brent went and got another Oreo, showed it to Sammi and then crushed it in his hand so she could see that the crumbs were the same as the ones in her dessert dish. She just took the remaining cookie from Brent's hand and ate it! She wouldn't try it until she saw us take bites.




She was still worried about the worm and didn't ever eat it. Once she got a taste of it, she started to warm up to the idea. She was even able to joke about eating dirt. But she isn't a big fan of pudding so she didn't finish her dessert. Oh well. The build up was PERFECT! I couldn't have asked for it to be better. I didn't think she'd buy it so it was a lot of fun to play it up and drag it out through dinner.

Elli had fun playing with the Oreo crumbs,
but wasn't a fan of the pudding, either.
As you can see, she loved her rice at dinner.

Little Nephite Girls

Elli's Birthday Presents

This is the final post about Elli's birthday. I promise! (please look at the previous two for great pics) We had a super fun day. After dinner the girls got baths and then into their pajamas.
Then we had Elli open her presents and cards. It was well past their bedtime which explains why they look so out of it in some of the shots. Thank you for all the presents. It was fun opening them with her.
Also, please check out the giveaway on Because Babies Grow Up. It's a CD from an awesome rock band for kids called Milkshake. I'd also love it if you'd help spread the word about the giveaway! You're the best family and friends a girl could hope for!

Elli's Birthday Party

We had friends come over in the afternoon to share cake and ice cream. It was a fun party, even though I forgot about the ice cream.


In all about 20 friends came over (parents and kids) and had fun tearing the play room apart. The popcorn was a great snack; I think even a bigger hit than the cake.


Elli scrambled around eating every unattended bowl of popcorn she could find. She absolutely loves the stuff. She was quite excited about the cake, too. It was double layer and I marbled Devil's Food and White together. Yum. I made cupcakes with the extra, but haven't had a chance to make frosting for them yet.

Elli got a stuffed tiger from a friend. It felt perfect since Sammi got her tiger pillow on her first birthday.
Another milestone down. Elli's had quite a busy year what with living in Orem, traveling to Colorado then driving across the country to now live in Tennessee.

Elli's Birthday Breakfast

Happy Birthday, Elli! It's been a fun day. To start, we really kicked off turning 1 by introducing Elli to the joy of cold cereal. She had Honey Nut Cheerios (because they're my favorite) in a bowl with whole milk. I was so impressed with how well she ate it with a spoon. Though she did often hold the spoon in one hand and use the other hand to pick up the cheerios and put them in her mouth. She did an excellent job of eating almost the whole bowl.

Sammi also enjoyed her cereal, but insisted on Frosted MiniWheats.