Friday, October 31, 2008

Faster than she Used to Be

Sweet Potato Spoon Party and a Nap Time Straggler


I let Bella try to feed herself with a spoon today. I'm not sure she got it.


Later today she brought a stow away when I got her out of the crib. The butterfly antlers got stuck to her diaper velcro--don't ask me how.

Needles and Numbers


Bella’s six month checkup snuck up on us. On Tuesday the doctor declared her tiny but thriving, and the nurse said she was about 1/3 the size of the other six month old she had just immunized. The nurse gave her a couple more holes in her legs and two purple band-aids. Here are the six month stats:

Height: 23.1 in 0 percentile
Weight 11 lbs 11 oz 0 percentile
Head Circ 16.25 in 15 percentile

She’s been quazi-crawling for the last few weeks. She gets around but it’s more of an army crawl than a real one. Just yesterday she got the hang of the real thing and doesn’t have to do the belly kick’n’wiggle between each scoot.

Baton Man


Why would KU choose a game against a top ten team to be their homecoming game? We kept up with them for the first quarter, but after that they just stomped on us.


The highlight of the game was during half time. They put together an alumni marching band and they played their instruments and lapped the stadium. The baton twirler, the one that marches in front, left the band a mile behind and had to march in place while he waited for them to catch up. I loved his white hair, it looked like he let a beauty college play with it.

Ryan’s favorite part was when I asked if they had “the down” yet, and when I suggested they do an “off-sides kick.” Just as I’ll never speak Spanish like a native speaker, I’ll never speak sports lingo without sounding like a girl who grew up with four sisters.

Besides that, even a terrible defeat can be fun to watch when you have a new camera!


KU Fans. The stadium was packed, even the little corners.

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Canon SD790 IS= quality photos

This is the first picture I took with my camera
Surely this is the cutest baby girl in the world.



I discovered the "Color Accent" feature on the Camera.
This is Bella Sleeping.

This is a cherry tree at the Winter Quarters TempleBella playing at the cemetary next to the temple. It's beautiful there.


Peeking from her crib

Bella just being silly.

One of the woodland creatures near our house.

Swinging with Ryan between loads of laundry.

Testing the durability of the mesh

Mama's girl

Camera!

This picture wouldn't have been possible (the Kodak EasyShare doesn't have Macro mode), except I just got another new camera.

My parents-in-law gave me a Canon SD750 last year for my birthday/ Christmas. It has been MIA, along with a couple other items, since the break-in back in January. At first we chuckled about our laptop crashing every time the villain tried to do any quazi-multimedia computing. We thought he might even return it after trying to write a Word document without the (.) and (?) buttons.

The missing camera was a different case. I stopped taking pictures for a few months because the Kodak EasyShare just can’t capture the moment like my Canon SD750 Digital Elph. I admit there were a few tears on more than one occasion.

Well for my birthday this year, Ryan teamed up with his parents to get me another camera. The Canon SD790 IS Digital Elph arrived last Friday. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE it! I even got a free 4GB SD card with it. Our lives have been photographed almost constantly for the past week.

Ta Da! Almost Done

After weeks of sanding, priming, painting, crackling, accenting and finishing I have something to show for all my hard work, besides paint under my fingernails. I still need to put matching handles on the two desks, but they turned out well enough that I won't need table cloths to hide them. I got both of the desks for free, and the chairs and dining room table. I only bought the painting supplies!



This is the plywood beauty we were dealing with before I found the other one. Unfortunately it got destroyed on its way to the dumpster.

Before I could paint the big desk I had to evict a nasty little resident.

Friday, October 24, 2008

Birthday Visitors



I can't imagine a more anticlimactic ending to a trip to France than Kansas. Mom and Julia convinced me that it was fantastic, and they really didn't mind shortening their trip to Europe at all. Either way, they bought my birthday presents in France, so I won't complain.

I'm sure Alicia was okay with leaving Loa for a weekend. We have cows here too, plus we live on a college campus. There are plenty of youth in need of counseling, should she have the itch.

Most of our guests stayed until Wednesday morning. With six people in a 1 bedroom apartment there was standing room only, but we went out a lot. We got to go to some church history sites near here, sample the top two local ice cream/ frozen custard joints, and hit The Plaza in Kansas City.

Among the church history sites we saw were; Adam-Ondi-Ahman, Liberty Jail, and Independence. People warned me ahead of time that there really wasn't anything to see at Adam-Ondi-Ahman, but we weren't there to be tourists anyway. It was beautiful and the Spirit there feels like a temple.

Of the top two ice cream shops here in Lawernce, the Darley girls unanimously voted Sheridan's as the best, based on the quantity of caramel stuck to the spoon after a bite of the turtle sundae.

We went to Jack Stack BBQ on The Plaza in KC. Alicia was pining for a bite of beef and something authentically Kansan (I didn't know there was such a thing) before she left and that's where we found both. I think the rib meat was still stuck in her teeth and under her fingernails on the flight home.

The visit was too short, and just made us more excited to see everyone when we come home in December. We'll be there for 24 days! Ryan reminds me of that every night. I think he's tired of school. He is only at midterm for the semester, poor guy.

All Day Birthday Bonanza



On October 10th I turned a quarter of a century old. We began our All-Day-Birthday-Bonanza shortly after 12:00 a.m. when Ryan bought our party hats. They only had one kind of hat. We wore them while we had a fat-free Pringles snack. It was the best day ever because I am married to Super Man and he made everything fabulous. How did he do it?

1. Began the day with a happy birthday serenade in bed.
2. Made me the traditional eggo breakfast in bed.
3. Surprised me with roses, a king sized snickers and a personal letter telling me how amazing I am.
4. He played tennis with me, and we tied our best score ever.
5. He helped me reassemble the desk that I had been painting, and rearrange the front room.
6. He took me to a movie all the way in Olathe even though we could have gone to the theaters in Lawrence.
7. Surprised me with a birthday lunch at Red Robin, which explains why we went to Olathe. There isn't one in Lawrence. (By the way, fry sauce exists outside of Utah. At Red Robin it is known as "tangy campfire sauce").
8. He helped me clean the apartment before my mom and sisters got here that night.
9. He slept on a cot that night and for the next three nights so that they could sleep in a bed.
10. He is amazing!

What a man! I'm the luckiest girl in the world!

Monday, October 6, 2008

Bella's Motivating Force



Bella has been getting up on her hands and knees now for a few weeks, but today she tried crawling for the first time. It might be because there was a special something, motivating her to move. You’ll have to check out the video.


Allergic to Kansas

Ryan left the Kansas rolling hills for five days to go to the annual International City Managers Association conference in Richmond Virginia. When asked the most remarkable parts of his trip, Ryan lists his tour of the capital building, getting to know Frank from China, and an absence of sneezing and runny nose.

Since returning home Ryan’s runny nose and elephant sneezes have returned full force. He tried every over the counter antihistamine there is, plus some prescriptions. So far, stuffing golf ball sized wads of toilet paper into his nostrils is the only effective solution to his drippy nose. The campus doctor says he’s allergic to Kansas. Ryan says we definitely won’t be staying in Kansas for the full time internship next year.

Sunday, October 5, 2008

Random Pictures


Bella, almost crawling

This is a little outfit Anika gave Bella.
Isn't it adorable?




Marlene sent this Halloween outfit. Cute!


My new phone!






A baby spinster

Tagged

I got tagged twice in one week, but it took me about that long to think of anything for the list.

The Rules are as follows:
- Link the Person who Tagged you.
- Mention rules on your blog.
- Tell about 6 quirks of yours.
- Tag 6 fellow bloggers to do the same.
- Leave a comment to let them know.

1. I don’t like any meat besides chicken.

2. I am known for indecorous sleeping positions. Most of the blackmail pictures ever taken of me were when I was sleeping.

3. I’m ticklish every where.

4.When I was little, I would rather eat butter on my sandwiches than mayo or miracle whip. Now, I would rather eat it plain or with ranch.

5. I changed my major from a career with almost guaranteed employment opportunity, to graduate with almost no earning possibilities.

6. I would rather go hungry than decide what to eat.

Trial, Error and Finally- Success!

Neighbors made many comments as they walked along the communal front patio to their classes. A dining room table, a chair and a dresser/desk in front of our apartment diverted traffic to the grass. The Chinese neighbors told me it looked really great when I had primed the table.

“Thanks, it isn’t finished yet.”

“Oh, but what happened here?” They asked the next day, pointing to the place where I had done the crackle finish.

“I put something there to make the paint crackle. I want it to look old.”

“I see.” He nodded his head, “Do you need to paint it again?”

As I was finishing the table a couple days later the same neighbor gave me a tip.

“If you go to the store, you can buy a table like this, and it will save you lots of time.” I laughed. Mine were free!

I finished the dresser, and must say I out did myself. I hit a few snags at each phase of the process, but after quick panicking, a little scraping and improvising it worked out.

Bella and the Rice Cereal


She slurped it okay the first time we gave it to her, although I’m sure she regurgitated 90% of what went into her mouth. Over the next three days she decided she would rather starve than eat from a spoon. Celia decided to take a break from the Rice Cereal for a few days, to save her strength.

Today we tried it again, this time we took her clothes off. She liked it! We’ll see if it lasts.