Evette and being a father

Pictures and a quick note on little Evette.

Tummy time

Success in the Bumbo chair! (19 Dec 2011) 

For one, she's already gotten very strong (and ever more pudgy - but that's a good thing!). She's holding her head up for longer and longer during tummy time, she supported herself for several minutes straight in a Bumbo chair for the first time just yesterday, and she's learning to use her little hands. She's mostly still holding her hands in fists, but she's grabbing fabric with her hands more every day. On Sunday I caught her, while lying down on her back, flapping her skirt up and down. So cute. She's growing up so fast.

 Helping me with the fridge...

 Trying on her new Christmas hat, gift of Grandma Kristen

Playing with mom and dad

People have frequently asked me how I feel about being a dad. My response: I love it far more than I expected to. I had high expectations but I had no idea. This girl - everything she does - melts my heart. Her smiles, her hilarious bent-bodied efforts to stand up, her yelps (she doesn't really cry ever, she just yells out when she needs something), her attentiveness to and curiosity of the world around her, the huge toothless smile she gives me when I come to get her from her crib in the morning, her fascination with our Christmas tree), her wonderful gurgling efforts to speak and sing, her genuine and unconditional love and trust... She's a wonderful baby and I love her with far more of my heart than I thought I even had.

(Yes, the above picture was in the previous blog post, but her eyes in this one are so great..)

Second-to-last finals!

Finals week itself wasn't too bad for me. Two tests, one pretty easy (wildlife biology - counts for the Bio General Education requirement) and one of moderate difficulty (International Political Economy); a report and one essay applying a principle of business strategy to anything I chose. My paper ended up being on core competencies for change - the idea that businesses, in order to be successful, must be able to nimbly respond to changes in the market - even if that means that they need to change their direction/skills/specialties/etc - to individuals' needs to develop core competencies for change in order to perfect ourselves to return to God's kingdom. In order to be welcome back into God's Kingdom, I believe one needs to be actively trying to improve himself - constantly changing for the better. It ended up being a neat, fun, little paper.

The report I had to compare how other undergraduate engineering programs approach social impact projects. I'm not going to describe why I had to do that - I'm simply writing this paragraph for the sake of completeness. Let's just say that I was in a class consulting engineering students to create better products to implement in impoverished areas of Peru and... well, it didn't quite work out, so I and the other business students wrote a couple reports to try to help them revamp their entire system. Kind of a bummer - if it had panned out I would be visiting Peru in the Spring.

The real fun part of finals for me actually took place the week before... I wrote a 47 page paper for my capstone course (my major is International Relations) on US-Japanese economic relations leading up to the attack at Pearl Harbor. That took an absurd amount of time, but the truly astonishing thing is is that I easily could have spend another month of full-time work on it. At that rate, it would become a book, but it would have been much more complete. In addition to that 47-pager, I also wrote a 14 page research paper on the 2007 Farm Bill (far more interesting than it sounds, I promise) in just over 24 hours (24 continuous hours, mind you - my first all nighter since high school).

Most of the books I used for my capstone paper, with all of their accompanying tags.

Once those papers were turned in, things got much easier for me and I was finally able to see my wonderful little family again. I mean, who wouldn't want to come home to these beautiful girls??

{Forgotten Carols}

For Caitlan's Christmas present the husband decided he wanted to take her to the Forgotten Carols, and of course I tagged along :) It was absolutely wonderful. The husband and I went a few years ago and it was better than I remembered it.



My favorite song was "I cannot find my way/Three Kings." It talked about the 3 Kings that found the Lord and how we can as well if we follow the star and light.

Let us remember the real purpose of CHRISTmas. :)

{Lights on Temple Square}

While the husband's family was in town we went to Temple Square in SLC and looked at the Christmas lights! It was wonderful! I think we went the first weekend the lights were lit so it was pretty crowded, but overall fun. We heard some wonderful choirs performing Christmas songs, went to the visitor's center and saw the Christus, watched a great little movie about families being together forever [which of course I cried happy tears through], took lots of pictures, smiled lots, laughed lots, and enjoyed the time with the Fam!

Evette was perfect [as usual - crossing my fingers that this keeps up...] and slept through pretty much the whole thing. We wrapped her up in a little pink fluffy snow suit thing, it was a little big for her, but it was pretty cute :)

We had dinner at the Blue Lemon - delicious!

Random side note - on the trip Brenden snapped this picture of our stroller/carseat with the cover on it because it looks like a "retarded duck" - which it does :)

{Tomatoes are Dangerous}

The other day I wanted chips and salsa with my lunch - delicious, right? So, I go and open the salsa jar and I sliced my hand open. The dried tomato crap around the jar sliced my hand as I was using all my strength to open that stubborn lid. It was like a paper cut, but with tomatoes....ouch.

For dinner that night I made a salad for dinner. As I slicing tomatoes I got tomato juices in my cut! Ahh!

Just be careful out there, dear friends....


who knew that there was a movie  about killer tomatoes!?!? Random.






Also - What's a blog post w/o baby pictures?

Hahaha - This girl cracks me up :)

{Christmas Baby}

This blog post contains 4 things I love super tons:

1. Cute Baby 

2. Cute Outfit 

3. Cute Husband 

4. Christmas Fun

Enjoy.

{A couple of thoughts}

Just some random thoughts - brace yourself.

- I love the first day of every month. I love turning the pages of my calendar and looking at the new picture. We have two calendars in the house. One of them is scenes from Europe - beautiful. It reminds me of our trip there last summer - I love it. The other calendar is one that I made for the husband last Christmas - it has pictures of us from that trip to Europe. I cannot wait to go back.

- I recently finished 3 books within about 2 weeks of each other. I was reading one on my phone [better for reading while nursing] {White Fang}, one hard copy {The Hobbit}, and one audio book [while doing dishes and cleaning the bathroom] {Gone With the Wind}. I grew so attached to the characters in my books, I'm nervous to start a new book. I kinda feel like if I started a new book it would mean I would be unfaithful to my wonderful characters that I met in my previous books... weird, huh?

- I'm just a few episodes away from finishing the entire LOST series. I'm hesitant to watch the last couple episodes because they are kind of intense - people dying everywhere and such - and I get scared. Also, I don't want this story to end and have these characters go away - silly, again.

- I painted my toenails red with white stripes yesterday in the spirit of Christmas.

- I made shrimp scampi yesterday and it was delicious

- I went on a closet purge last night. I was only going to go through my sock/underwear drawers but ended up going through everything. When I was finished it was like a huge sigh of relief. I have a big bag ready to go to good will and another one ready for when my sister gets to town and she can take what she wants [you're welcome]

- I love being able to light candles in our home. At our last apartment our landlord was kinda crazy and didn't allow them. I'm a big fan of alternating between my Christmas wreath and Sparkling Cinnamon candles everyday :)

- I cannot wait until my family gets here!!! it's going to be awesome.

- Also, I have the cutest baby in the world.