Sugar, sugar, sugar

And of course, what would a birthday blog be without a little cake action? I realize this video is long, but I don't have a program to edit it. So there. Just stop the video when you've seen enough, though the clapping and jabbering is cute in my opinion. Oh and you may want to turn your volume down. The party guests are wild.

Family Facts

Life continues to fly by for us, as I know it does for everyone. Ben has discovered just how much fun it is to move around and get into things, which keeps me on my toes, whereas before he was content to play in one spot. A few weeks ago, Carl decided to spoil us and bought gym memberships. We thought for sure we would only need to pay half price because you can actually see the gym from our front porch. Unfortunately, no such discount exists. It's been so nice to be able walk down the street and work out, sometimes together. Thanks to our families for always making themselves available to watch Ben for us. The first months results are in: we've each lost about 3 lbs and have toned up a bit. I've lost 1/2 inch off my arms, thighs and calves, and Carl's lost 1 1/2 inches off his waist. We've been working with a trainer that puts together lots of exercise routines for us, and we're loving it. Here's to health.

Carl is involved in several research groups at BYU and is always working on extra papers and projects. A few weeks ago, he found out he's being published again. This will make number 3, but this is the first time he is the lead on the paper. I'm so proud of how hard he works for our family. I don't know how he does it. An exciting extra, is that he gets to present his paper at a big linguistic conference this May. The conference is being held in a little place called Malta, a beautiful country near Italy. He gets to fly out, attend the conference, and tell everyone how smart he is for doing something really smart. He'll be gone a week, and I'll miss him terribly, but I'm oh so excited for him.

Other than playing with Ben, a lot of my time is spent finding new recipes and creating things in the kitchen, and it's been so much fun. Carl and I have some new favorite recipes and some not so favorite recipes including these awful lettuce wraps, and some not-so-delicious black bean soup. Thankfully, Carl said he still loves me. I just get so excited about some of the stuff you can do with food. And my Vita-Mix. If there were one kitchen thing I could not live without, it would for sure be my beloved Vita-Mix. It was a group gift at my bridal shower, and it has brought us much happiness. I use it literally every day. I've used it to make soup, salad dressing, milkshakes and smoothies... so very many smoothies. I even use it to grind my wheat to make bread, rolls and crackers. As you might have guessed, I am in love with it.

Sunday marks Ben's first birthday and so far, we've all survived. I'm a little nervous to wean him and honestly a little sad. I have exclusively nursed him and now I have to worry about him getting his nourishment by other means. We've already given him cows milk and he seems pretty happy with it. My baby is growing up. Some of Ben's favorites as of late are: light switches, his ball popper, pulling off his socks, pounding on the keyboard of the computer and piano, and dancing to absolutely anything with a beat: music, our footsteps as we walk to church, my Kitchen Aid mixer, or mommy doing her jumping jacks. But his most favorite is Daddy. As soon as he hears the garage door open and he knows it's that time of day, he stops whatever he's doing and waits anxiously, looking longingly out the door of whatever room we're in until he sees him. And in that moment, he can hold his excitement no longer. He immediately bursts out shrieking, and giggling, as he kicks and bounces until Daddy picks him up. It melts my heart every time. I love my two boys.

Avo-ghetti

A few weeks ago my sister was visiting and wanted to see Ben eat avocado because she had heard it was amusing. Unfortunately, Ben didn't perform to his full potential, so hopefully this will make up for it.

Alternatives

Recently, Ben discovered that if he were very brave, he could go from sitting to crawling and get to something that was out of his reach. He has even more recently discovered just how unnecessary that is.

Bliggity Bloggity Blah

You know how at the top of the page of the HYMNs, it gives you a suggested emotion and tempo with which to sing the song? Well since you can't hear my emotion as I think the following post, and I don't care to be misinterpreted, I suggest that you read this blog with the sarcasm and wit with which it was intended. 140 wpm.

I'm starting to realize just how huge all this blog stuff is, and how I can't quite measure up. Remember the good old days when the big thing that made moms so cute and creative was scrapbooking? Back when you could kind of fake it, cuz it's not like anyone could actually access your scrapbook through the magic of the world wide web? Well, that's all gone. Now you're a quick click away from seeing just how on-top-of-it all the other cyber moms are, and whether or not they truly have the cutest blog on the block. I really don't know how you all keep up with it. Between scrubbing poop out of half of Ben's clothes, trying not to burn dinner, figuring out the perfect schedule for nap time, and looking up where I can find the cheapest cereal and bananas, I'm supposed to find time to tell everyone what I did that day?... oh, and here's a few dozen pictures of my family? Well, the answer is: OF COURSE. And so, I must, at least if I expect to keep any of the friendships I've made throughout the years. And because I seem to offend my friends if I ask them, "What've you been up to?" and i get a response close to, "Haven't you read it in my blog?" oops. Wouldn't want to loose the closeness and personalness (I am aware that isn't a word, but my linguistic husband isn't home to give me help) of our relationship. Yes Blogging. It's what all supermoms do. Maybe it's the pressure, maybe it's a good outlet, or maybe it's this hidden and burning desire to be discovered like that Julie What'sherface, and have our life made into a movie and become loved and adored by all the world. (And rich. Let's not forget rich.) And so, I join the elite group, trying so desperately to tread water. Here we go.

Ben's Latest Feat

Many of you may know that Ben's dad may not have walked until he was 18 months, and since he seemed to have turned out alright, we're not too worried about the fact that Bens motor skills are a bit (or more) behind many other babies, like several cousins and second cousins who've mastered these skills months ago, regardless of the fact that many of them are actually younger. However, being first time parents, we have the right and duty to celebrate every little accomplishment. As you can see he is reluctent at best to find the courage to take the plunge. Go Ben go.

Our House

On December 15th we moved our family into our first home together. It's the type of grown up thing I would be too scared to do, but Carl was all about it. Of course there were the incentives that made it easier; the $8k back from the government, along with the 2 car garage for us to park, so we never have to wake up early to go scrape snow off the cars. Other incentives included the things we would leave behind like the 2 flights of stairs I had to climb with one arm full of groceries, and the other arm full of Benjamin and more groceries, and possibly our neighbors that we'll never have to share walls with again. We'll never have to hear blenders running first thing in the morning from one wall, or vacuuming 4 times a day from another. Never again will we suffer through the Michael Jackson memorials, in which I have heard the same song cranked on repeat for over an hour on more than one occasion. (I'm all for MJ, but hearing 'Beat It' 14 times in a row is a little much.) We will be free from all kinds of noises during nap time and the loudest of all, the extended family crammed into a small apartment living below us, that you could hear throughout all hours of the day and night, whether it was loud conversation, music blaring, movies blasting or children running around screaming just outside the door. I will most assuredly not miss the dirty looks from across the parking lot from my neighbors whom I kindly requested (once) that they keep it a little quieter, at 10 o'clock at night, after my baby kept waking up, as they had a conversation with one person in the apartment and the other in the car, yelling out everything she needed to remember at the grocery store. Suffice it to say, we're so excited for our new home. The backyard is full of fruit trees, making us even more excited for the spring. It's been fun making all the changes to make it more our own. We've spent most Saturdays, as well as some nap times painting. My dad is giving our laundry room a makeover, and there are other little things we are doing. The process is going a little slower than we'd like, with Carl's busy schedule and a little one that needs constant attention. We've made some progress though, and there are pictures below for your viewing pleasure.

Our first night in our new home.

The color here is the color we chose for Ben's room and the office

Guest Bath
BEFORE
Notice the sea shell wall paper and the pink plastic shower rod. When we moved in there was a matching shower curtain. You won't see it here, because we took it down immediatly. We appreciated the thought, but why, oh why did they leave their old shower curtain for us?

DURING
He's only smiling because I told him to. Scraping off wall paper actually is not fun.
No more sea shells!

AFTER
We took out the mirror and slider cabinet underneath and replaced them with a 36" white trim medicine cabinet with the triple mirror (perfect for doing your hair). Replaced the shower rod, ripped out the caulking around the sink, recaulked the sink and shower, and painted the walls green, and the base boards bright white.

Here is our room. The only thing that's different in here is the paint, so for a "before" picture just imagine dirty white walls. There's a part above the closet that's not quite finished. And we still need to hang our pictures.

Funny Carl

I couldn't resist posting this one. It reminds me of the movie Incredibles. The sene at dinner when they tell the mom she makes a face. I love that he is completley unaware. I was trying not to laugh into the camera.

My Precious

A day under 10 months and we did it! Not totally smooth yet, but we'll get there.

December 07

To celebrate my birthday, as well as Pearl Harbor Day, Carl took me to The Harvest Room at Thanksgiving Point. It's lovely there. It was so nice to be able to go out, just the two of us (thanks Grandma and Grandpa Miller). What made it even nicer is it snowed a ton that day, so it was slow for them and we had a little area mostly to ourselves. Outside they had a little corral with reindeer. I may have been the only adult that was excited by this.

It's been so much fun watching Ben grow. He becomes more and more talkative all the time, particularly when it's quiet. Just last Sunday in sacrament meeting I was holding him and he wouldn't stop jabbering and kept opening his mouth and rubbing it all over my face (if that makes any sense). I couldn't stop laughing, so Carl took him out... it still took me a while to stop laughing. An interesting thing I've noticed is when he's making happy noises it's "dah da da da" and when he's upset and crying, the noises sound like "mah ma maa ma"... it's just not fair.

I may not crawl yet, but Ive got moves.

This is Ben's favorite song that Carl plays. Particularly the part he keeps repeating, it's not the only part Carl can play. This clip is a little loud, you may want to adjust your volume.