Welcome Andrew!

Congratulations to Tanner & Cherylyn on the birth of their newest addition to the family! We wish you lots of luck & happiness! (Andrew is my newest nephew - and we are seriously lacking in boys in Heath's family... Hopefully my new addition will add to the boy numbers as well but we'll have to wait a little while still to find out :)

Congratulations M & R!

My sister M & her boyfriend R got engaged over the Martin Luther King weekend. Roger is currently living & teaching art at a high school in Arizona and is planning on moving back up here after the school year is over. They have set a wedding date for June and plan on living in the Salt Lake area so if anyone hears of any art teaching positions that open up, let me know...

At it again...

Well, the Utah state legislature is at it again trying to modify the existing direct-entry midwife law. It looks like I will be spending some more time up at Capitol Hill again this year. Senator Margaret Dayton has introduced a bill once again that would strictly limit the practice of direct-entry (homebirth) midwives in the state. We worked really hard at getting the current law passed three years ago and statistics are great so I really don't see any need for this bill other than the Utah Medical Association trying to assert more control over the practice of these midwives... Stay tuned for more developments.

You can view the proposed bill here:
Utah Senate Bill 93

Favorite movie

Last week Blondie had a doctor's appointment and had to get some immunizations which she wasn't too happy about. She did great for them but was pretty emotional afterwards. After we got home and had some lunch she was still complaining about her arms hurting so I gave her some Tylenol and took her downstairs to watch a movie. I asked her what she wanted to watch (thinking she would pick one of the kid movies we checked out from the library) and she immediately said, "I want to watch you exercise..."

Just the day before this I finally broke out one of my pregnancy aerobic tapes and started trying to get myself into shape. I haven't felt up to it much this pregnancy. Finally back in December I started getting some of my energy back and haven't been as tired as I was the whole first half of my pregnancy. Then with Christmas & our trip to Florida though, I've been too busy to think about exercising. I finally decided last week that I need to start doing something or I'm going to have a horrible time losing any weight after this baby is born. The funny part is that I wasn't planning on exercising that day & ended up doing it thanks to Blondie. Blondie & Kitty both love it when I turn on my exercise video - so keep up the encouragement girls!

Finally finished!

I finished the family calendars on Saturday and mailed them out on Monday! I am glad to have that project out of the way and have been taking some time to relax this week (hence I haven't done any postings yet). This year I ran into a few computer & printer problems that made the printing & editing part take longer than I would have liked. I also wasn't too happy with the way a few of the pictures printed, but I wasn't able to reprint them because it takes a lot of paper & ink to print eight calendars. It's amazing to me each year how long it takes to print everything out. It takes me about 2 full days of printing and I have to be constantly present so the pages don't stack up in the output tray (the ink has to be given plenty of time to dry or the pages will stick together & the ink will come off onto the neighboring pages). I'm very pleased with how the calendars turned out though and can't wait to hear how everyone likes them.

Back in Primary again

Once again I have been given a new calling in our ward. It seems like the organizations keep fighting over me - my longest calling to date is just over 1 1/2 years. This is my 4th calling in the 4 1/2 years we've lived in the ward. I am now the new primary pianist. I was called in to meet with a member of the bishopric the second Sunday in December. He extended the new calling to me and said that I would be released from YW and sustained to the new calling on the last Sunday of December. Well, the last Sunday in December came and the change didn't take place. I waited until the next Sunday and they still didn't make the change. It wasn't until the week we were in Florida that they finally made the change (I had to ask someone though). It was kind of hard serving in my YW calling during that time because I wasn't sure what was going on and when I would actually be released. It makes it hard to attend planning meetings about upcoming activities when you're not sure if you'll be attending the activity or not and you aren't supposed to say anything to anyone about the upcoming release.

Yesterday I had my first week in the calling and it was interesting. It didn't help that the chorister was out of town so we had someone filling in for her who didn't quite know what was going on either. I think I will enjoy the calling though and it will be nice to have my Wednesday evenings back again. The only difficulty will be when I have our new baby and DH will have to take the baby for the first 2 hours of church...

I enjoyed working with the YW but it is a pretty time consuming calling and the last couple of months I have felt like a change would be coming soon for me. (Now we just need a new calling for DH - he has served in the Elder's Quorum presidency since we moved into the ward...)

Success!

Finally, after months of trying I was finally able to upload a picture to use for my blog title. I think that blogger must have finally made some changes (while we were out of town) so that uploading pictures actually works somewhat reliably if you are using a Mac. I was able to post my previous blog entry with pictures faster than I ever have before (and the pictures only took one try each)... Hooray!

Odds and Ends

Well, we made it back safely Wednesday night from our trip to Florida & we had a blast! My parents did an awesome job with the kids and they hardly even missed us. It was a little rough coming back to temperatures in the teens when we had just been enjoying temperatures in the 60s & 70s in Florida. I was freezing all day on Thursday. I will blog more about our trip when I get some more time. Right now I am working on the annual family calendar that I send out at the end of January and I'm busy doing laundry and trying to get the house back in order.

M&M & Luke just finished up another round of swim lessons while they were off track (they go back to school on Tuesday). M&M passed level 3 and Luke almost passed the level 2. They both made a lot of progress over these last couple of weeks.

On another note - check out this picture:
Luke was making himself a sandwich for lunch on Thursday and when he pulled out two pieces of bread, the first one looked normal and the second one had a huge hole in the middle of it. I went and looked at the rest of the loaf and this is what I found. It's got to be the biggest air pocket I have ever seen in a loaf of bread...

And, while Luke was eating that sandwich that he made, his second front tooth fell out (in his sandwich). He tried to take a bite out of the sandwich and immediately said, "ow" and put the sandwich down. Then he said, "Uh-oh" because he noticed that his tooth was not there anymore. Then we looked down at his sandwich and saw it sticking out of the bread. That tooth has been loose for a while and I thought for sure that it would fall out while he was staying at my parents' house, but amazingly it didn't.

Warmer weather...

We finally made it above freezing yesterday! The high was around 37 degrees and we're supposed to get into the 40s today (which is a sign that a storm is on its way). The weather forecasters are predicting a pretty good snowstorm this weekend. I haven't seen our grass since the end of November. This has definitely been our snowiest winter since I've lived here in Utah and it's been one of the coldest as well. (Can't wait for Florida!)

BTW - I am definitely enjoying my kids being off-track right now. It's been nice to be able to sleep in until 8 or 9 every day. They go back to school on January 22nd.

Happy New Year 2008!

My parents were able to come over and bring in the new year with us. The kids had fun playing games - the problem was keeping them all involved in a game since there is a wide range of ages. We ended up setting up a second table and having 2-3 games going at once. At one point I was playing two different games at the same time.

I tried to get Blondie & Kitty to bed before midnight but Blondie was in tears because she couldn't understand why she had to go to bed and M&M & Luke were allowed to stay up and play more games. She was also upset that she hadn't had a chance yet to play a game with Grandma S. So I brought Blondie back downstairs and when my mom heard that Blondie wanted to play a game with her, she took her to the other table and played one. After the game was over Blondie announced that she was tired and went upstairs to bed on her own. :) Kitty on the other hand didn't want to have anything to do with bed and ended up falling asleep in DH's arms about 10 minutes before midnight...

On New Year's Day we went over to my parents' house for a ham dinner with my parents & sister M & her boyfriend R. We also played a few games while we were there. I grew up in a family that played games all the time and it's starting to get fun now in our family since the kids are getting old enough to play more advanced games (it gets a little mundane having to play Candyland or Chutes & Ladders all the time). It was fun this New Years Eve to teach the kids a few new games and to take the time to sit and play with them. When I am caught up in the busyness of everyday life I don't take the time as much as I should to play games with my kids.