Comic Strips and General Conference

This is a continuation on the comic strip theme from my last post.  With General Conference around the corner, I often find myself wondering how I will remember and apply all the good council we'll hear.  Well, here's a new method: read the funnies page.  This is Pickles from March 25, 2011:


What the grandpa should have said was "President Thomas S. Monson once said ..."  I love that Pickles is quoting Grandpa now.

Spooning

As you know, I enjoy the funny pages of the newspaper.  I now read most of my favorite comic strips online.  This was my favorite of the day. 

Spaghetti O's

Now, I have never seen the draw of Spaghetti O's. That is probably because we did not eat Spaghetti O's growing up and so I do not find them to be particularly palette pleasing. I know some of us do (Jed). However, when we were in Texas, I did feed Amelia Spaghetti O's with meatballs on the night we arrived before I made my Walmart baby food run. Amelia loved them. So last night when we were planning to leave her for a date, one of the rare times since she was born, I decided to treat her to Spaghetti O's.
   She ate Spaghetti O's and I tried her Spaghetti O's but ate something else for dinner and then Alan and I dropped Amelia off at her daycare. The daycare does a "Date Night" once a month where the teachers stay until 10:30 so that the parents can have an evening out if they like. So we dropped her off and then continued on our way for the date.
  Well about 15 minutes after dropping her off I started feeling a little queasy. That lasted the rest of the night. It began to get super intense on our car ride back to the daycare. I asked Alan to check his phone to make sure the daycare had not called to tell us Amelia was sick, but they had not. However, when we arrived at daycare we found that Amelia had been sick and had thrown up all over herself, the teacher and the bed! Poor Amelia (and poor teacher).
Was it the Spaghetti O's? We cannot say for sure, but it certainly did little to redeem them in my eyes. So, Amelia and I enjoyed a night of food poisoning together. We are both doing much better today.
I do not wish any bouts of food poisoning on any of you any time soon!

On The Move

Amelia is doing a lot more on her own now.  She loves to feed herself whenever possible. She has also mastered crawling and pulling herself up on things. She is pretty fun. We love you,

What a great little girl!

The Home on Butterfly Lane

 It has been a long time in coming, but to all those whom I have promised pictures of the house we are in the process of buying, here they are.  It needs a little work, but it has great bones and Alan is wanting some projects. The inspector who did our inspection yesterday said that for a house its age (built 1996) it is in great condition. That always makes you feel good, right! Please note the ample room for visitors.

The front of the house on Butterfly Lane! (What a great name huh?)

The Entryway

The Formal Living Room, the entry is just off to the right there.

Standing in the formal living room looking into the formal dining room. Entryway to left and door to kitchen visible.

The Kitchen. We are planning to do some updating so if anyone is desiring a wood-panelled dishwasher, we will save it for you. (It leaks apparently.)

The desk area in kitchen with pantry to left and entrance to formal dining room on right.

Looking from the kitchen down into the family room. This room L-s off to the left.

Looking from the family room back into the kitchen.

Looking into the L portion of the family room, on the floor plans they had the option of walling this off into a 5th bedroom.

Your Guest Room!

Your Guest Bathroom. Matthew if you need this shower curtain to complete your Coca-Cola collection,we may be able to negotiate a trade. Say for one cotton candy machine?

An upstairs room.

A second upstairs room.

The upstairs bathroom.

The master bedroom.

More of the master bedroom. Doors lead to balcony.

Master bathroom-yes that is carpet you have seen in all the bathrooms.

The television is also perfectly positioned to watch from the shower.

Fancy brass fixtures in master bathroom.

View of the back of the house from the backyard.

The back porch. Yes, a television on the porch.

The yard. That is a grapefruit tree you see by the back wall.

 

The pool. Now we have you huh? Yes, come visit. It is 78 degrees right now.

The grass. I really wanted some grass. That is the grapefruit tree again and an orange fruit tree of some kind to the left.

The back of the house. I think they are taking the hot tub. Alan is hoping they are taking it.

And that is our house! Or, it will be our house on February 28th at which time we will replace all the carpet, rip it out of the bathrooms and move on in. The rest of it we will work on once we're in. If you have a hankering for home projects and don't want to do your own, come on down.

 We are excited about it and it backs up next to the elementary school, so all the swing sets and slides we want.

Tales of a Traveler (and her parents)-Stop 1: Connecticut

We left Utah the end of December with some anticipation for the long trip we were embarking on...but it was fantastic to be able to travel around and see a lot of our family and friends. Our first stop was Connecticut.

Here is Miss Rose early in the morning with her North-Eastern cousins. What a relaxing morning.

Here we are on the "baby mat" in the kitchen with Clara. This was a favorite spot because Amelia could see everything going on in the kitchen, dining room and downstairs family room!

Ah, New Years! We rang in the New Year by playing the Enchanted Forest game and setting off Chinese poppers!

 The poppers came with these fantastic crowns.

We also went ice skating. We did not want to skate with Miss Rose so we took turns. I have long had the fear that I will fall over while skating and someone will skate off my fingers. Think how much worse I would feel if they skated off my daughters fingers? She stayed on solid ground.

 

Here we all are after a great skating session. 

It snowed while we were there (and apparently it has not stopped since) but Amelia had fun outside admiring the snowman and watching Jim pull the kids around on the sled.

Snow Time!

Here is Amelia on the guest room bed. Sarah has one of the best guest rooms ever. It makes me feel like I am staying in the gabled room from Anne of Green Gables. I love it! I have not idea why it always reminds me of that. Thanks Sarah and Jim and family, we loved our time with you!

Jolly Jumper

It took lots of advanced internet searching but we finally found the true Jolly Jumper.  What is the Jolly Jumper you ask?  It is the same baby jumper that Mom has in Bountiful.  You may subsequently ask where we found it?  Canada.  That's right, our neighbor to the north.  We wanted it quickly and the only retailer that wouldn't take over 4 weeks to get it to us charged us an extra $10 with $20 shipping.  It was definitely worth it.  Now we just need an importer/smuggler to get them for everyone.